An inchoate thought of mine, which I am throwing out for discussion.
A recurring theme in some of Cassandra's posts and arguments -- and a healthy thing to examine, whether or not she's right in each particular case -- is conservatives and libertarians falling into the same argumentative vices as their leftist opponents. It's comforting to think the other fellows are less honest, so that "the evidence of [the right side] is to be accepted against [the wrong side] in every case." But, as she's right to watch for, people sharing the true, correct opinions can and do fall into the same intellectual vices as those who oppose them.
Knowing that leaves me no less convinced that my opinions are true and correct (that's what having opinions means), but...I haven't seen strong evidence that people holding one opinion are more virtuous than people holding another, or that I can tell who's a better neighbor by what his ideology is.
(This is a moral problem I have with some world religions, incidentally, since they doom your soul based on your opinions...about whether God exists, for example, or how many of him there are. But that is another story.)
Experience and
pop-psychology books convince me that it isn't really right to think of a human mind as a unified whole, with a single "virtue" statistic, but more like a set of subroutines that run simultaneously and don't always cohere. People don't think their way into being virtuous, at least most of them don't ("high-functioning sociopaths" may be an exception) and I don't see why evolution would select for logical consistency. And so perhaps it isn't surprising that a lawyer who'd go to the wall for his clients, or a soldier who'd fall on a grenade for his countrymen, can be an absolute beast to his wife. Broadly speaking it's about being concerned toward your fellowman...but it's unevenly applied. Likewise I can't help but admire a sincere patriot...but if you've served, or even if you haven't, I bet you've known a few who were "decency challenged."
Now, what's interesting to me is this -- can our experiences test the idea, about whether ideas relate to virtue? You know that Phineas Gage had much of his morality torn out by a piece of iron (though per that link, he was able to grow it back; a message of hope too often ignored). A base where I used to work went joint...so that the Air Force took over basic police functions while I was there...and one of them told me how surprised he was at how many domestic violence reports he got from the Warrior Transition Unit. I wasn't very surprised....without going too far, I had to deal with TBI soldiers on occasion, and some of them (and only some of them) really did seem to have their self-control and related virtues shaken a little loose.
None of the articles I've read about Phineas Gage relate whether his political views, his religion, or his ideology changed at all. And the nature of my duties -- and the way I prefer to conduct them -- is such that I almost never learned a soldier's ideology. I have a notion, which I can't prove, that none of these fellows took a sharp turn Left or Right, or High Church or Pentecostal, when they lost some brain functioning and some moral restraint with it...but I was wondering whether anyone here has knowledge, or experience, or thoughts, suggesting a link?
(I have one relative who made an enormous "moral leap upward" when she got religion, and her political views changed at the same time, but I think her changed opinions came as a package deal with the religious experience rather than a result of being more virtuous per se.)
The difficulty of testing cognition
With all the fuss lately about high-stakes testing and the seeming inability to make judgments of any kind about whether schools are worth the price of admission, I found this study of age-related cognition decline interesting. The blog is entitled "The Importance of Being Wrong," apparently in honor of the author's interest in the process of learning not only by association but by elimination. (In other words, why a really effective dog trainer--not me--not only rewards the right action but, perhaps even more important, never fails to discourage the wrong one, even when tired or bored.)
The linked post focuses on tests designed to discover whether the ability to recall words alters with age. The author makes an interesting case that there is a stronger association of poor performance with the size of the sample than with age. Among the possible explanations are the greater difficulty of excluding specific cognitive diseases from a large sample, or the greater difficulty of ensuring consistent evaluation techniques with a larger research staff. It's also possible that older research subjects are more anxious being tested by youngsters, or in a university setting, than are younger subjects.
It's a tricky process, determining whether cognitive declines exist and, if so, what causes. Nevertheless, though testing is fraught with challenges, I remain skeptical that it should be all that hard to get a rough idea whether a group of youngsters is noticeably less ignorant and untrained after a year of publicly funded instruction than before, though I suppose it can be quite tricky to compare two such sets of youngsters, taught by different people or methods, and obtain any certainty about which techniques were more effective.
Another post by the same author explores the difficulty in teaching children to recognize color apart from the objects conventionally associated with it. Very young children may know that bananas are yellow and apples are red without gaining much skill in assigning colors to neutral objects in the laboratory. I thought that was interesting in light of our discussion a few weeks ago about the oddly indeterminate use of color in Homer, and the differences in color language across cultures. Anyone who's ever tried to paint in color knows how surprisingly hard it is to choose a color from a palette that will genuinely recreate the impression of a colored object in the real world. It's not necessarily a natural skill to tell what combinations of frequencies correspond to what we carelessly call "red" or "blue" in various objects.
The linked post focuses on tests designed to discover whether the ability to recall words alters with age. The author makes an interesting case that there is a stronger association of poor performance with the size of the sample than with age. Among the possible explanations are the greater difficulty of excluding specific cognitive diseases from a large sample, or the greater difficulty of ensuring consistent evaluation techniques with a larger research staff. It's also possible that older research subjects are more anxious being tested by youngsters, or in a university setting, than are younger subjects.
It's a tricky process, determining whether cognitive declines exist and, if so, what causes. Nevertheless, though testing is fraught with challenges, I remain skeptical that it should be all that hard to get a rough idea whether a group of youngsters is noticeably less ignorant and untrained after a year of publicly funded instruction than before, though I suppose it can be quite tricky to compare two such sets of youngsters, taught by different people or methods, and obtain any certainty about which techniques were more effective.
Another post by the same author explores the difficulty in teaching children to recognize color apart from the objects conventionally associated with it. Very young children may know that bananas are yellow and apples are red without gaining much skill in assigning colors to neutral objects in the laboratory. I thought that was interesting in light of our discussion a few weeks ago about the oddly indeterminate use of color in Homer, and the differences in color language across cultures. Anyone who's ever tried to paint in color knows how surprisingly hard it is to choose a color from a palette that will genuinely recreate the impression of a colored object in the real world. It's not necessarily a natural skill to tell what combinations of frequencies correspond to what we carelessly call "red" or "blue" in various objects.
Contracting Movement
On January 29th of this year, the federal government posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle “Unaccompanied Alien Children“.The contract posting is listed at the General Services Administration's contract website, FBO.gov, and looks legitimate. The claim that 5,000 was the previous maximal total, however, looks to be false, if we judge from this UNHCR report. The figure hasn't been that low since 2011; it doubled in 2012 and doubled again in 2013. So a 65,000 estimate is assuming a rate of increase that falls rather than continues steady. If the UN report is right, all the states bordering Mexico are seeing such immigration attempts up by about 400%.
Not just any contract mind you, but a very specific contract – for a very specific number of unaccompanied minors: 65,000.
• Why would DHS and ICE be claiming “surprise” by the current influx of unaccompanied minors on the border in June, when they were taking bids for an exact contract to handle the exact situation in January?
• Secondly, how could they possibly anticipate 65,000 unaccompanied minors would be showing up at the border, when the most ever encountered in a previous year was 5,000 total ?
So DHS is guilty of good planning, I guess.
Gene Hackman on Independence Day
My other favorite cowboy sentiment on the holiday:
In honor of which, today's beer is one I haven't tried before. It's from a company tagged "Lonerider: Ales for Outlaws."
I'll let you know how they turn out.
In honor of which, today's beer is one I haven't tried before. It's from a company tagged "Lonerider: Ales for Outlaws."
I'll let you know how they turn out.
John Wayne on America
It's an interesting list of reasons, and easy to support: one of the crowning glories of America is the freedom to move at will across this beautiful continent, on vast highways or country blacktops, on the rails or in the air. Political systems aside, the thing itself is beautiful, and lovable, as is the freedom to go out and see it.
Happy Birthday, Revolutionaries.
Vive la france
It's Independence Day, and normally I'm not in a great mood about the French. But, you know, they did help us during our War of Independence, and by golly the little buggers can cook.
We have a neighborhood party to attend this evening, complete with (I hope) excessively dangerous fireworks. After considering several things to bring, I opted for lazy security in the form of a big loaf of French bread, now that I have the technique down. Today's batch is particularly easy, because the NPH, with a higher tolerance for these things, dragged down the old Sunbeam mixer and figured out what was wrong with it that made us put it away on a top shelf years ago. Now it works like a charm and makes the dough-kneading a snap. Two big loaves are rising at this moment.
The extra loaf of bread inspired me to get ready to make some onion soup. My indispensable new Michael Ruhlman cookbook, "Twenty," surprised me with the claim that my onion soup would be better made with water than with chicken stock. I tried it some a few weeks ago: he was right. It eats up some time, but otherwise couldn't be easier. Starting early in the day, you slice up about eight onions of any kind, pour them into a large heavy pot with a tablespoon or so of butter and some salt, sweat them for a few minutes with the lid on, then cook them down slowly for several hours at whatever temperature you're willing to monitor them at: the slower, the less often you have to check. They'll be in there for quite a while before they lose enough water to need much attention. Towards the end, it's best to keep a sharp eye on them.
When the onions get dark, dark, dark brown after three to five hours, and have shrunk down to quite a small volume, you have not only the makings for instant onion soup but a confection with unlimited uses. The dark, caramelized flavor is unbelievable, especially if you get a truly dark brown, crunchy bit. Put them on anything, or refrigerate or freeze them at this point, or go ahead and make soup.
All the soup requires is pouring six cups of water onto the onions, heating it up, and adjusting it to taste with any or all of the following: salt, pepper, Vietnamese fish sauce, anchovy paste, vinegar, sherry, or red wine. Then, of course, top it with slices of bread covered with toasted Swiss and/or Gruyère cheese. Traditionally, you put the bread and cheese on top of individual oven-proof bowls and melt them that way, but I don't have any such bowls at the moment, so I toast the bread-and-cheese on a cookie sheet, then plop one onto each serving of soup. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a set of bowls in local antique shops, though, so I can achieve this effect:
It's peasant food, and great stuff. Not counting the cheese, the whole batch (including the whole loaf of bread) costs about $6 in ingredients.
We have a neighborhood party to attend this evening, complete with (I hope) excessively dangerous fireworks. After considering several things to bring, I opted for lazy security in the form of a big loaf of French bread, now that I have the technique down. Today's batch is particularly easy, because the NPH, with a higher tolerance for these things, dragged down the old Sunbeam mixer and figured out what was wrong with it that made us put it away on a top shelf years ago. Now it works like a charm and makes the dough-kneading a snap. Two big loaves are rising at this moment.
The extra loaf of bread inspired me to get ready to make some onion soup. My indispensable new Michael Ruhlman cookbook, "Twenty," surprised me with the claim that my onion soup would be better made with water than with chicken stock. I tried it some a few weeks ago: he was right. It eats up some time, but otherwise couldn't be easier. Starting early in the day, you slice up about eight onions of any kind, pour them into a large heavy pot with a tablespoon or so of butter and some salt, sweat them for a few minutes with the lid on, then cook them down slowly for several hours at whatever temperature you're willing to monitor them at: the slower, the less often you have to check. They'll be in there for quite a while before they lose enough water to need much attention. Towards the end, it's best to keep a sharp eye on them.
When the onions get dark, dark, dark brown after three to five hours, and have shrunk down to quite a small volume, you have not only the makings for instant onion soup but a confection with unlimited uses. The dark, caramelized flavor is unbelievable, especially if you get a truly dark brown, crunchy bit. Put them on anything, or refrigerate or freeze them at this point, or go ahead and make soup.
All the soup requires is pouring six cups of water onto the onions, heating it up, and adjusting it to taste with any or all of the following: salt, pepper, Vietnamese fish sauce, anchovy paste, vinegar, sherry, or red wine. Then, of course, top it with slices of bread covered with toasted Swiss and/or Gruyère cheese. Traditionally, you put the bread and cheese on top of individual oven-proof bowls and melt them that way, but I don't have any such bowls at the moment, so I toast the bread-and-cheese on a cookie sheet, then plop one onto each serving of soup. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a set of bowls in local antique shops, though, so I can achieve this effect:
It's peasant food, and great stuff. Not counting the cheese, the whole batch (including the whole loaf of bread) costs about $6 in ingredients.
Slaughter
Matt Walsh ponders our different response to African big-game hunting and abortion:
I can sit here all day and write poems about the beloved walrus or the hallowed dolphin, but my pro-animal stance will likely never require anything of me. . . . A humpback whale will never show up at my door and ask me to take care of it for the next 18 years. A Siberian tiger probably won't come to my house one day and demand that I change my entire life to accommodate it. I might go out and adopt a pet, but that is always a deliberate act. Babies, on the other hand, happen when we have sex. But sex is fun, and babies are hard work. Babies intrude on our fun. They ruin it. This, and only this, is the reason why we defend the slaughter of children while weeping over the remains of a murdered leopard.He goes on to wonder how people explain their hierarchies of right and wrong. Why is killing an endangered species wrong? Where do you get that idea from?
The Time Has Come
Steve Forbes is not a stupid man, of course. Still:
The current IRS scandals are now bigger than those of Watergate in the 1970s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. The most powerful and feared government agency was turned loose on groups of citizens who the White House and congressional Democrats felt threatened their power. President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS against opponents, as did Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon....So the idea is that the way to address a scandal worse than the Teapot Dome is to pass a resolution that will certainly be vetoed, thus cementing the IRS's personal loyalty to the President?
This should be closely followed by attacks that culminate in defunding almost all of the IRS after the midterm elections, which the Democrats will lose badly. There can be no more continuing resolutions that allow the tax-collection agency to operate business as usual, even though Congress hasn’t passed an appropriations bill. If a continuing resolution is necessary to avoid a government shutdown, then by all means pass one–but specifically do a near-zeroing-out of the IRS (the only exception would be a handful of clerks to process refunds) until these scandals are fully and credibly investigated. If the President vetoes such a budget resolution, the onus is on him, not Congress.
The right way to address the issue is to disband the IRS entirely, replacing it with a Federal sales tax that will be collected at the point of sale like other sales taxes. Such sales taxes can be overseen by the state agencies that already oversee them, or by new agencies among the states that lack them. Then we need not worry about audits that can be used to harass political opponents, nor do we have to worry about approval of tax breaks for left-leaning organizations while right-leaning ones are delayed, delayed, delayed.
There are lots of things not to like about sales taxes, especially their regressive nature. But their real benefit lies in a relative absence of tyranny. Stripping the Federal government of the mechanism to act like tyrants is a wise domestic policy, here as elsewhere.
The Fourth of July is tomorrow. It's worth remembering that the Founders were revolutionaries. The document we celebrate on the 4th is not the Constitution but the Declaration of Independence, with its signal guidance "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Whether we alter or abolish, let the replacement be one in which the government has much less oversight over the private aspects of our lives. Let it lose the power to command us to sign away our Fifth Amendment rights when we file and sign a mandatory tax return. Let it lose at least those powers that have become concentrated in the IRS.
Delicious tears
I like the way Kevin Williamson thinks, probably because I'm not a nice person.
Progressives mad about Hobby Lobby started a campaign under the motto: “Not my boss’s business.” But Obamacare makes it — pardon me for noticing — literally your boss’s business. And I don’t mean “literally” the way Joe Biden uses it; I mean “literally” the way literally literate people use it. The alternative is this: Your money, your pills, your call. If what you care about is access to contraception, then that’s a pretty good model. If what you care about is using the levers of the state to force moral uniformity on the entire country so that atavistic Evangelical types have to knuckle under to your demands — well, you lost.
Urfeathers
Phenomena, which is the site that hosts Not Exactly Rocket Science, has a post today about Archaeopterix, the "wingless bird with hairy feathers" we all remember from the old cartoon "B.C." A new specimen preserves some fantastic detail in the feathers. It seems that dinosaurs first developed feathers for insulation, display, or some such thing, and only later did some species find them useful in developing flight.
MDMP
Looks like the military's planning in Baghdad is structured around covering State's retreat.
Officials would not say how many of the armed helicopters have been sent to the country, stating only that they will be based in Baghdad and could assist with evacuations of American personnel....UPDATE: This aspect of our withdrawal is the one that I find most morally troubling, and one that is going to be a large stumbling block now. Why would they trust us now, those who were Sons of Iraq, if we did try to reach out to them? We made a lot of promises about ensuring fair treatment during the Surge that the Obama administration just walked away from.
"The threat to Baghdad is still very legitimate. And we also want to make sure that we are doing what we can to help our colleagues in the State Department continue to function out of the embassy there and to have the flexibility, if they want to make resource and manning changes there, that we're able — we're in a position to help them do that," [RADM] Kirby said.
December Talks To May
A part of an essay by a formerly drug-addled Boomer on reaching 60:
And don’t believe the beauty page gush that you are in fact only as old as you feel. It’s a nonsense, based on the assumption that ageing is primarily a physical process. It isn’t, it’s a maturing one. It’s not a feeling, it’s an experience. You are as old as you can remember....
A contemporary of mine, after a number of marriages, found a girlfriend less than half his age of a transcendent pneumatic beauty who hung on his every word — and dumped her after a couple of months. Why, I asked — she was perfect! “Too many things we didn’t have in common,” he said sadly. Like what? “Well, the Eighties.”
Correlation. Causation?
Gallup correlates two of its polls worldwide, and finds that the answers line up.
Poll 1: Is corruption in your government widespread?
Poll 2: How satisfied are you with the freedom you have to live your life and make your own decisions?
Americans have fallen to 36th place in the second poll, out of the top few in 2006. Nearly four out of five agree that corruption is widespread in our government.
Poll 1: Is corruption in your government widespread?
Poll 2: How satisfied are you with the freedom you have to live your life and make your own decisions?
Americans have fallen to 36th place in the second poll, out of the top few in 2006. Nearly four out of five agree that corruption is widespread in our government.
Trust Me. I'm Not Very Nice.
People with more agreeable, conscientious personalities are more likely to make harmful choices. In these new obedience experiments, people with more social graces were the ones who complied with the experimenter's wishes and delivered electric shocks they believed could harm an innocent person. By contrast, people with more contrarian, less agreeable personalities were more likely to refuse to hurt other people when told to do so.As subsequent studies will doubtless show, bikers are the most trustworthy of all. Interdisciplinary research is already pointing in that direction.
And Now A Moment of National Unity...
Since we've had such a bitter outpouring of divisiveness today, how about a story we (almost) all agree upon?
71% Think IRS Likely to Have Destroyed E-mails to Hide GuiltSee? We're not so different after all.
Most voters think it’s likely the IRS deliberately destroyed e-mails about its investigations of Tea Party and other conservative groups to hide its criminal behavior. Two-out-of-three now believe IRS employees involved in these investigations should be jailed or fired, and most suspect the agency of targeting other political opponents of the Obama administration.
That SCOTUS Ruling We've Been Awaiting
It turns out to be a very narrow ruling, not a ringing defense of religious liberty, but nevertheless better than an endorsement of the Administration's principle that people must submit their religion to the state if they enter the market. It also isn't an attack on the idea that free contraception should be made available to women as a matter of state policy:to impose its values on religious dissenters to assert a uniform corporate law.
Alito also said the decision is limited to contraceptives under the health care law. "Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," Alito said.Given the narrowness of the ruling and the fact that it doesn't interfere with the government's preferred policy outcomes, you might have expected this to be another unanimous ruling. No, it is not: it was a 5-4, conservative/liberal split. Justice Ginsburg, indeed, took the time to read her dissent in public. Her opinion is that this ruling won't turn out to be as narrow as it was crafted to be: she thinks it will have a sweeping effect that will create "havoc" for attempts by the state
He suggested two ways the administration could ensure women get the contraception they want. It could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said. Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations. Those groups can tell the government that providing the coverage violates their religious beliefs. At that point, the groups' insurers or a third-party administrator takes on the responsibility of paying for the birth control.
Why Not Weigh The Fish?
On the intersection of Thales, Hume, a Thracian servant girl, and the Merry Monarch.
Violations of Human Rights
Did you know that the United Nations has found Detroit in violation of internationally recognized human rights? Specifically, the right to water.
A right to be provided with something you don't pay for, though? Who then must pay for it, and how do you guarantee that there will be enough of it if paying for it is not required? That's the conundrum behind the American concept, whereby your only (mostly) unlimited rights are rights to be left alone -- freedom to choose to practice your own religion, say. Even these rights, which require nothing from anyone else, are subject to practical limits. Even this morning we're waiting to see how unlimited that freedom is. The "Hobby Lobby" ruling is due today.
Still, it's interesting to see Detroit of all places hoisted on the UN's petard. It was the core of what Dr. Mead calls "Blue Model" Liberalism during the 20th century, the same sort of Liberalism that produced the UN and its structures.
UPDATE: Of course, health care is a human right, too.
“Disconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying," said Catarina de Albuquerque, who is the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation.That's an interesting claim, probably incompatible with the American understanding of rights. It's philosophically defensible, though, if you believe -- as one long tradition does -- that rights come from specific human needs. According to this tradition, if a thing is truly necessary for human beings to exist (like water), or truly necessary to develop their basic capacities (like education), such a being a right to it.
"In other words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections."
A right to be provided with something you don't pay for, though? Who then must pay for it, and how do you guarantee that there will be enough of it if paying for it is not required? That's the conundrum behind the American concept, whereby your only (mostly) unlimited rights are rights to be left alone -- freedom to choose to practice your own religion, say. Even these rights, which require nothing from anyone else, are subject to practical limits. Even this morning we're waiting to see how unlimited that freedom is. The "Hobby Lobby" ruling is due today.
Still, it's interesting to see Detroit of all places hoisted on the UN's petard. It was the core of what Dr. Mead calls "Blue Model" Liberalism during the 20th century, the same sort of Liberalism that produced the UN and its structures.
UPDATE: Of course, health care is a human right, too.
Syncopation
I tried my hand at setting a bluesy Bonnie Raitt number to musical notation. As before, you can hit the automated "play" button at the bottom left.
Jobs Aren't Fiefs
In his new(ish) digs at Takimag, Theodore Dalrymple takes a swipe at a French campaign "For Women in Science" - featuring posters that declare, "Science Needs Women." His case hits the main logical points you'd expect - "Science does not need women any more than it needs foot fetishists, pole vaulters, or Somalis. What science needs...is scientists." A couple of thoughts of my own:
There's a brand of sub-economic thinking that I think lies behind these posters. It's thinking of jobs (jobs as scientists in this case; but other jobs in others) as fiefs. If you're the Thane of Cawdor, you're entitled to the rents, and no one else; if you're also Thane of Glamis, you get the rents of Glamis and no one else. Presumably the King would like to have a good fighter in those positions, but more importantly he wants someone loyal (through family ties or otherwise), and the central concept is that whether you earned the fief through good service or not -- it is an award of the King's favor; it might go to anyone of any ability; but he chose you. There are only so many little plots of ground in the kingdom, and one more for someone else is one less for you. And if your family isn't getting these favors while his new in-laws are, they're "favored" over you, and if you felt entitled, you may just be angry. ("False, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence" may've been so motivated in his plots against Edward IV.) Naturally, then, in our world of political "tribes" -- you want your tribe to get its share, and you'll clamor and rebel 'til it gets it.
Since jobs, contracts, wealth, and talent are not like that -- abilities are not evenly distributed, and neither are the habits and attitudes that put those abilities to work; and a contract to perform services is not an entitlement of royal favor -- the campaign is as absurd as Dalrymple paints it, though it flatters resentment.
Unfortunately, in the midst of striking down one kind of sub-economic thinking, he falls into another himself:
The first is from King Lear:
My second response is indirectly from Jean-Baptiste Say -- who in turn formulated it in response to an earlier brand of subeconomic thinking. (Into which Dalrymple seems to be falling.) The economic world does not go 'round because we're overproducing stuff that advertising tricks us into wanting (so that our failure to want it would be a terrible harm, and we're only one great moment of enlightenment from collapse); but by people's efforts to get what they want. If we decided, all together, to acquire only what we "needed," we'd decide at the same time to produce only what we "needed" -- and at the end of the adjustment (which might be quite a shock, I grant) the economy would tick along just fine.
Doubtless it would be an economy of extreme poverty, and probably support only smaller populations - maybe built around some kind of subsistence farming, or maybe less than that - but in the world he hypothesizes, so what? No one would mind. It would fit the "needs" of that society. Rousseau might've approved, and we'd have no worries about who practices science...which, presumably, we would not "need" at all.
There's a brand of sub-economic thinking that I think lies behind these posters. It's thinking of jobs (jobs as scientists in this case; but other jobs in others) as fiefs. If you're the Thane of Cawdor, you're entitled to the rents, and no one else; if you're also Thane of Glamis, you get the rents of Glamis and no one else. Presumably the King would like to have a good fighter in those positions, but more importantly he wants someone loyal (through family ties or otherwise), and the central concept is that whether you earned the fief through good service or not -- it is an award of the King's favor; it might go to anyone of any ability; but he chose you. There are only so many little plots of ground in the kingdom, and one more for someone else is one less for you. And if your family isn't getting these favors while his new in-laws are, they're "favored" over you, and if you felt entitled, you may just be angry. ("False, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence" may've been so motivated in his plots against Edward IV.) Naturally, then, in our world of political "tribes" -- you want your tribe to get its share, and you'll clamor and rebel 'til it gets it.
Since jobs, contracts, wealth, and talent are not like that -- abilities are not evenly distributed, and neither are the habits and attitudes that put those abilities to work; and a contract to perform services is not an entitlement of royal favor -- the campaign is as absurd as Dalrymple paints it, though it flatters resentment.
Unfortunately, in the midst of striking down one kind of sub-economic thinking, he falls into another himself:
In any case, we all know that commercial advertising is not intended as an enquiry after truth: it is in general trying to make us want what we do not need, an endeavor which makes the economic world go round. If consumers suddenly decided that they would buy only what they needed, they would do more damage to the economy than whole skyscrapers full of bankers misappropriating shareholders’ funds!Cute, maybe, but poorly thought out. Firstly he doesn't say what he means by "need" -- an important qualification. "Need" for what purpose? To live another minute, or something more? Maybe he knows what kind of good life we "need" things for, but he ought to have specified or provided a link. (Normally someone who tells me I don't "need" something wants to justify taking it from me...Dalrymple, at least, isn't thinking that way, though I wish he'd watch that kind of language.) Assuming he has something in mind -- bare survival to an average age of 35, say -- I have two answers for him.
The first is from King Lear:
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggarsA perceptive thought from a man Dalrymple often recognizes as unsurpassed in his understanding of human nature. Humans as they are do not limit themselves to "need," and do not need anyone's advertising to persuade them to strive for much more.
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady.
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm....
My second response is indirectly from Jean-Baptiste Say -- who in turn formulated it in response to an earlier brand of subeconomic thinking. (Into which Dalrymple seems to be falling.) The economic world does not go 'round because we're overproducing stuff that advertising tricks us into wanting (so that our failure to want it would be a terrible harm, and we're only one great moment of enlightenment from collapse); but by people's efforts to get what they want. If we decided, all together, to acquire only what we "needed," we'd decide at the same time to produce only what we "needed" -- and at the end of the adjustment (which might be quite a shock, I grant) the economy would tick along just fine.
Doubtless it would be an economy of extreme poverty, and probably support only smaller populations - maybe built around some kind of subsistence farming, or maybe less than that - but in the world he hypothesizes, so what? No one would mind. It would fit the "needs" of that society. Rousseau might've approved, and we'd have no worries about who practices science...which, presumably, we would not "need" at all.
Iss a puzzlement
The central banks try to figure it out:
"Overall, it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets' buoyancy and underlying economic developments globally," the report read.My husband adds: "It is almost as if the true price of money has been obscured, but that's crazy talk."
The week in pictures
Powerline's week in pictures is always good. This one adds two good short videos.
The cartoon is tailor-made for our resident philosophers, in case they're planning on a family road trip this summer:
The cartoon is tailor-made for our resident philosophers, in case they're planning on a family road trip this summer:
So you want to be a moderate
Zero Hedge has an application form for Syrian rebels to fill out.
Complete the following sentence. “American weapons are…”
A) Always a good thing to randomly add to any international hot spot
B) Exactly what this raging civil war has been missing for the past three years
C) Best when used moderately
D) Super easy to resell online
The magic of crowd-sourcing
A Project Gutenberg pen-pal from Spain solved the mystery: the song was released on a 45 in 1973 or 1974 entitled "Tubular Bells," but the tune I remembered was Side B, also (confusingly) entitled "Tubular Bells."
I remembered the tune very accurately, as it turns out--even the ornaments showed up towards the end--but I'd completely forgotten the background arpeggio except as a dim memory of a kind of rhythm.
I just can't say what a relief this is! Now I want to go play with the noteflight score to put in the correct left-hand part.
I remembered the tune very accurately, as it turns out--even the ornaments showed up towards the end--but I'd completely forgotten the background arpeggio except as a dim memory of a kind of rhythm.
I just can't say what a relief this is! Now I want to go play with the noteflight score to put in the correct left-hand part.
". . . the other 24% are comatose."
Doom Awaits You, IRS
Why such uniformity of opinion on the matter? It might have something to do with the fact that no one believes the IRS accidentally lost their email records as the result of a cascading computer failure which the agency remedied by simply throwing the affected hardware away. When asked if they "believe the IRS that the emails were destroyed accidentally," or "they were destroyed deliberately," 76 percent of survey respondents said the latter. Only 11 percent of independents, 5 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent of Democrats managed to convince themselves that the IRS's story was possible, if not likely.Past due, really. The man was right: a jury, even a jury of public opinion, has every right to conclude that the evidence destroyed was probably not good for the IRS.
Violence and its discontents
From Ricochet:
Kevin [Williamson]’s mistake was stating the biological fact that Laverne Cox is a man. As my new allies inform me, this is hateful and indeed “violence” against transgendered people. I blame kindergarten teachers who have for years trained children to “use their words” as opposed to violence, when apparently, there is no distinction to be drawn between the two.Anyone who read "Anthem" in his/her/their/xyr youth will remember the fictional society's abolition of the pronoun "I" and the requirement that each persyn self-refer as "we."
Unclear on the concept
More from Maggie's Farm, linking the NY Post:
The New York City Department of Education employs a full-time director of homeschooling to manage the Big Apple’s roughly 4,000 homeschooling families.Well, as long as a government employee is still drawing a paycheck.
Goals for marriage
The NY Post examines divorce trends in the U.S. As Cassandra often has reported to us, women have been the primary instigators for a while, but socio-economic clout correlates strongly with staying married:
The author wonders whether women are abandoning marriages because their husbands are maladroit geeks and grubby slackers. My husband has been remarkably patient with my maladroit geekiness and grubby slackerdom.
In the 1970s, when divorce skyrocketed, Wilcox says, many researchers expected that the upper classes would be worst hit.
The sexual revolution seemed to free them from the social strictures of marriage. Hope for the future of the American family rested on those middle and even lower classes in the heartland.
In fact, the exact opposite has proved true. Marriage is thriving among the wealthy and educated.
“Who would have thought elites would have devoted themselves maniacally to their children’s success?” asks Wilcox.
It seems as though marriage does well when it is a vehicle for something else — whether that’s making sure your children have food on the table or that they get into an Ivy League school.Marriage does well when it is a vehicle for "something else"--than the "Cinderella romance" addressed by the article. Who'da thought.
The author wonders whether women are abandoning marriages because their husbands are maladroit geeks and grubby slackers. My husband has been remarkably patient with my maladroit geekiness and grubby slackerdom.
"A question foremost on everyone's lips"
An article summarizing trends in the Guardian quotes the burning issues posed by the thinking class, including the exasperation of a professional lesbian over the growing interest in same-sex marriage. Who needs marriage, anyway? "Same-sex marriage fits comfortably within the conservative ideology of the self-sufficient family and contributes to the politics of state austerity." Totally, and what's more:
H/t Maggie's Farm.
"Isn’t marriage merely a clever ploy to keep us quiet about the trickier issues such as the deportation of lesbian asylum seekers?"The scales have fallen from my eyes.
H/t Maggie's Farm.
Only think
Reading about the New York Times's account of the failed negotiations for a status-of-forces agreement in Iraq call irresistibly to mind this passage from "Sense and Sensibility":
Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. . . .
"It was my father's last request to me," replied her husband, "that I should assist his widow and daughters."
"He did not know what he was talking off, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child."
"He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home."
"Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider," she added, "that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy--"
"Why, to be sure," said her husband, very gravely, "that would make great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition."
"To be sure it would."
"Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were diminished one half. Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!"
"Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is--only half blood!--But you have such a generous spirit!"
"I would not wish to do anything mean," he replied. "One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more."
"There is no knowing what they may expect," said the lady, "but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do."
"Certainly; and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds apiece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have about three thousand pounds on their mother's death--a very comfortable fortune for any young woman."
"To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds."
"That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives, rather than for them- something of the annuity kind I mean. My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable."
His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan.
"To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years, we shall be completely taken in."
"Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase."
"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world."
"It is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr. Dashwood, "to have those kind of yearly drains on one's income. One's fortune, as your mother justly says, is not one's own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent-day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one's independence."
"Undoubtedly; and, after all, you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure; you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them anything yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses."
"I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should by no annuity in the case: whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father."
"To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I'll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year apiece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?--They will live so cheap! Their house-keeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something."
"Upon my word," said Mr. Dashwood, "I believe you are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be acceptable then."
. . .
This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father than such kind of neighborly acts as his own wife pointed out.
Beethoven!
Gary Oldman apparently decided to reprise his famous role in The Professional while giving an interview to Playboy -- this time in words, rather than with a shotgun.
Well, I hear the hangovers get worse as you get older. Twenty years ago, blow apart a whole family on the silver screen, nobody bats an eye. Now, speak some disapproved words....
Well, I hear the hangovers get worse as you get older. Twenty years ago, blow apart a whole family on the silver screen, nobody bats an eye. Now, speak some disapproved words....
Musical question
I liked an instrumental song that was on the radio long ago, I'm thinking the 70s, whose name I can't recall. I've heard that there are apps now that will let you hum a tune into your phone and get an i.d. Pretty cool app, but either this song isn't in my memory or I couldn't produce it faithfully enough with a hum. Then I found an app that will let me hum a tune into my laptop and see it rendered into musical notation. Now, that is extremely handy! It does a pretty good job of dealing with the time signatures, but it has a hard time understand where the measures are supposed to start. Also, this song had some tricky little ornaments that I couldn't sing quickly and accurately enough. Not daunted, I found a third site with some interactive software that let me type in notes on a staff and fiddle with the lengths of each note. Then I could hit play and hear how it worked out. I think you guys can go to this site and hit "play" at the bottom left and hear it, too, so I'm hoping someone will recognize it and remember the title or the artist.
Bannockburn, Day II: The Great Battle
Today we celebrate the 700th anniversary of the pivotal battle of the Bannockburn. It turned the course of the Scottish War of Independence against the English for a generation, and set the stage for Robert the Bruce to bring the Scots to full independence before his death. Out of this war would come the Declaration of Arbroath, one of the first times that a people asserted to the Pope that they would insist upon a right of elective kingship: to support the man God sent to be king only so long as he did his duty in protecting their liberty and rights, and to drive him out and choose another if he failed this duty.
The short version of this story is as follows: the English army under Edward II had to relieve Stirling Castle by a certain deadline, or the castle would surrender to the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce. This was not because the castle was starving, or being ravaged by disease. It was a gentleman's agreement to avoid the slaughter associated either with reducing the place by storm, or starving the troops. The keeper of the fortress was a gentleman, and Edward knew he was going to keep his word and surrender if not relieved. So the English army was in a hurry.
Robert the Bruce was there in force, so Edward brought heavy cavalry in large numbers, as well as infantry and longbowmen. The Scottish cavalry was not in any sense the equal to the English cavalry, as you know if you followed last night's link and read Froissart's account of the Scottish way of warfare in the period. The English army was far larger, perhaps as many as ten thousand men larger. Edward intended to force his way to the castle's relief by main strength.
Now Edward I had been a very great king, not just cunning but wise in the ways of strategy and propaganda. His son, Edward II, was not the man his father was. Robert the Bruce had been in this fight since the days of the father, and had developed a keen sense for both strategy and tactics. In addition, as last night's story of his personal combat shows, he was a knight of great personal prowess.
Yesterday's story was about how the English sought to slip a vanguard past the Scottish lines, which would have allowed them to fix the Scottish position so as to allow the English army to cross in safety, and engage the Scots in good order at a place of their choice. The vanguard was repulsed, killed, or captured. The English thus had to try to cross the Bannock Burn without that security. They were fearful about this, because it was in the midst of just such a maneuver that William Wallace had destroyed their army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge.
Edward elected to cross at night, in the hopes that the crossing might be effected before the Scots knew of it. In this he was successful, but a consequence of his success was that his army had to encamp against the river as it crossed. If they had pushed further in, to secure better ground for a stand, they might have alerted Scottish scouts.
Thus on the morning of the 24th of June, 1314, word came to Robert the Bruce that the English had crossed the river and were tightly encamped among the wetlands on the shore. The Scottish King knew his cavalry could not stand against them, but he recognized he had a substantial advantage if he could trap them in that boggy ground. So he ordered the cavalry to find and disperse the English archers, in order to cover the approach of his foot. These were arranged in a kind of infantry formation known as a schiltron, similar in concept to the later Spanish tercio but oval: a formation chiefly of spearmen, to repel cavalry in the way we saw in last night's story, but with some axemen and others who could rush out of the formation and kill downed men.
Advancing these formations to pin the English in the muck, Robert the Bruce was successfully covered in his approach by his cavalry's action against the English archers. The Scots advanced on the English camp, and it was then that Edward saw the formations suddenly stop and kneel. A friar went among them.
"Think you, will these Scots fight?" Edward had asked one of his knights a short time before.The king ordered one of his Earls, a man he had recently accused of cowardice, to lead a charge to disperse the Scottish formations. The charge ended in the slaughter of the Earl's forces, and the Scots came on against the camp. Edward tried to deploy his longbowmen, which would have allowed him much the same effects we hope to get out of artillery today: to damage the Scottish formations' structure, but also to deny them the ability to advance over certain parts of the terrain that were under the danger of the longbows. Once more the Scottish cavalry, led by Sir Robert Keith, recognized the danger and dispersed the archers before they could form up to take action.
"Ay, that will they," was the reply, "to the last."
But now, seeing them kneel, Edward cried out, "They kneel, they kneel; they ask for mercy."
"They do, my liege," was the answer, "but it is from God, and not from us."
Edward then attempted to send his heavy cavalry, the knights who had accompanied him for this purpose. But in the narrow neck of land, made of boggy ground, the cavalry could not well come together for a charge, and could not well maneuver their heavy horses. When they came against the schiltrons, their unstable formations broke.
As the Scots advanced toward the English camp, news of the initial victories had spread back to the Scottish camp nearby. There bands of Highlanders -- irregular forces that Robert the Bruce did not wish to employ in the battle, because they would cause confusion and disorder -- heard the news that the English were being defeated, and came rushing in great numbers. The English, already discomfited, heard the warcries and saw the onrushing forces, and broke. But there was nowhere to retreat except through the river.
Edward II escaped, with the help of his picked men. He fled to Dunbar castle, where as quickly as possible he took ship for England. His retreat from the battlefield turned the English retreat into a rout. In the wake of the battle, the destruction of England's army in the north not only allowed Scottish raiders into England, but took so much pressure off Robert the Bruce that he was able to stage an invasion of Ireland, hoping to open a second front in the war on the Anglo-Norman kings.
Boom
But you know, he really does look pretty good in sunglasses. Can't really blame the fanboys in the media.
Gospel music
It's not too early to start putting together our Christmas carol repertoire. Tell me you can resist the idea of going door to door singing this little number in a quartet:
I've got this song on the indispensable six-CD set "Goodbye, Babylon," but it can also be found on the album "Death Might Be Your Santa Claus," available on iTunes, in case you're looking to spruce up your Christmas music collection. Who could resist "Papa Ain't No Santa Claus (Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree"?
On a milder note:
And abandoning the carol theme altogether:
And to finish up, something to dance to:
I was going to include "Jesus Dropped the Charges," but really, the title says it all, and the music is almost a disappointment.
I've got this song on the indispensable six-CD set "Goodbye, Babylon," but it can also be found on the album "Death Might Be Your Santa Claus," available on iTunes, in case you're looking to spruce up your Christmas music collection. Who could resist "Papa Ain't No Santa Claus (Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree"?
On a milder note:
And abandoning the carol theme altogether:
And to finish up, something to dance to:
I was going to include "Jesus Dropped the Charges," but really, the title says it all, and the music is almost a disappointment.
Everything is under control
Did the takeover of Mosul come out of the blue?
The Kurds became especially alarmed at signs that ISIS had already formed a shadow government in Mosul, weeks before initiating the carefully planned takeover of the city 10 days ago. According to the same Kurdish military sources it was accomplished with ease and without serious fighting after local Iraqi commanders agreed to withdraw.
The prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, says he warned Baghdad and the United States months ago about the threat ISIS posed to Iraq and the group’s plan to launch an insurgency across Iraq. The Kurds even offered to participate in a joint military operation with Baghdad against the jihadists.
Washington didn’t respond—a claim that will fuel Republican charges that the Obama administration has been dangerously disengaged from the Middle East. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki dismissed the warnings, saying everything was under control.
Alternative forms of commerce
I'm all in favor of whatever kind of exchange leaves both parties to the transaction satisfied enough to complete it, but this is a little weird.
"In Fact I'm Glad You Mentioned It."
Apparently prosecutors make good Congressmen sometimes -- especially in the face of corrupt officials. Trey Gowdy raises an important legal point, and then turns the IRS's defense into an invitation to consider what criminal charges ought to be brought against them.
I love hearing an IRS official stating that he doesn't need to know the law, because you can use "common sense" to know what's right. Yes, in theory, that's how it ought to be. The law ought to line up with common sense, such that an ordinary person need not be a lawyer in order to know how to behave in a fashion that is both moral and lawful. That is the only proper way to arrange a state, given the practical need of division of labor in an advanced economy: we can't train everyone as lawyers, because time and money for education are limited and we need most people to do other things. Therefore, the law should accord with the common sense, so that honest people can rely on the resources they can actually expect to have in order to be good citizens and avoid criminality.
Nothing could be further from the actual facts of how our Federal laws and regulations are ordered, however. How charming to see the defense -- which any court would reject were it raised by a citizen without legal training -- raised by a high official of a Federal regulatory agency who is himself a lawyer!
I love hearing an IRS official stating that he doesn't need to know the law, because you can use "common sense" to know what's right. Yes, in theory, that's how it ought to be. The law ought to line up with common sense, such that an ordinary person need not be a lawyer in order to know how to behave in a fashion that is both moral and lawful. That is the only proper way to arrange a state, given the practical need of division of labor in an advanced economy: we can't train everyone as lawyers, because time and money for education are limited and we need most people to do other things. Therefore, the law should accord with the common sense, so that honest people can rely on the resources they can actually expect to have in order to be good citizens and avoid criminality.
Nothing could be further from the actual facts of how our Federal laws and regulations are ordered, however. How charming to see the defense -- which any court would reject were it raised by a citizen without legal training -- raised by a high official of a Federal regulatory agency who is himself a lawyer!
Bannockburn, Day I: The Death of Henry de Bohun
During the events described in the first post below, an English knight named Sir Henry de Bohun broke away from the English vanguard because he saw the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce, and recognized him. The king had come on a palfrey, not a warhorse, to observe the battle and issue orders rather than armed to partake in the battle. This account describes the palfrey as a "pony," which is not I think accurate; but the Scottish horses were generally substantially smaller than the English horses, making them less capable in a heavy charge but better for extended marches and long raids.
Fully armed, riding upon his great war-horse, the English knight came thundering on. Bruce, on his little pony, could have no chance against him. There was a dreadful moment of suspense. The two armies watched breathlessly. Bruce waited calmly, and when Bohun was almost upon him, he suddenly turned his pony aside. Bohun dashed on. As he passed, the King, rising high in his stirrups, brought his battle-axe crashing down upon the knight's head. The steel helmet was shattered by the mighty blow, Bohun fell to the ground dead, and his frightened horse dashed riderless away.
Cheer after cheer rose from the Scottish ranks, and the generals gathered round their King. They were glad that he was safe, yet vexed that he should so have endangered his life. "Bethink you, sire, the fate of all Scotland rests upon you," they said.
But the King answered them never a word. "I have broken my good axe," was all he said, "I have broken my good axe."
"This Is A Totally Dopey Criticism"
Physicist Sean Carroll explains to his colleagues some misconceptions they have about philosophy.
Liberty and education
I realize most people are never going to homeschool, and I'm not going to claim I never disagree with Rand [correction: Ron] Paul, but he speaks to me on education issues:
“The idea that government ‘experts’ can centrally plan a nation’s educational system is just as flawed as the idea that government can centrally plan the economy."
. . . The Ron Paul Curriculum, launched last fall, is designed to be used by homeschoolers, and takes a unique approach to education that reflects Paul’s libertarian-leaning political values. The Curriculum includes lessons on Austrian economics and libertarian political theory, and teaches students how to start their own business on the Internet. It almost totally eschews social studies until students are at the high school level, taking the view that early childhood social studies education mostly promotes statism. The Curriculum also reflects a Christian worldview, with early history education putting significant focus on the Book of Genesis, Biblical Israel and the Reformation.
Paul’s program is also designed to be relatively cheap, as it uses no textbooks and is mostly self-taught, meaning there is little need for costly teachers. High school learning builds up to students taking CLEP exams that can provide students with college credit, thereby allowing them to graduate earlier and at a lower cost.
Bannockburn, Day I
Here's how Wikipedia describes the first day of the Bannockburn.
Here is the description from In Freedom's Cause:
On the morning of Sunday, the 23d of June, immediately after sunrise, the Scotch attended mass, and confessed as men who had devoted themselves to death. The king, having surveyed the field, caused a proclamation to be made that whosoever felt himself unequal to take part in the battle was at liberty to withdraw. Then, knowing from his scouts that the enemy had passed the night at Falkirk, six or seven miles off, he sent out Sir James Douglas and Sir Robert Keith with a party of horsemen to reconnoitre the advance.The greater fight was to come.
The knights had not gone far when they saw the great army advancing, with the sun shining bright on innumerable standards and pennons, and glistening from lance head, spear, and armour. So grand and terrible was the appearance of the army that upon receiving the report of Douglas and Keith the king thought it prudent to conceal its full extent, and caused it to be bruited abroad that the enemy, although numerous, was approaching in a disorderly manner.
The experienced generals of King Edward now determined upon making an attempt to relieve Stirling Castle without fighting a pitched battle upon ground chosen by the enemy. Had this attempt been successful, the great army, instead of being obliged to cross a rapid stream and attack an enemy posted behind morasses, would have been free to operate as it chose, to have advanced against the strongholds which had been captured by the Scots, and to force Bruce to give battle upon ground of their choosing. Lord Clifford was therefore despatched with 800 picked men-at-arms to cross the Bannock beyond the left wing of the Scottish army, to make their way across the carse, and so to reach Stirling. The ground was, indeed, impassable for a large army; but the troops took with them faggots and beams, by which they could make a passage across the deeper parts of the swamp and bridge the little streams which meandered through it.
As there was no prospect of an immediate engagement, Randolph, Douglas, and the king had left their respective divisions, and had taken up their positions at the village of St. Ninians, on high ground behind the army, whence they could have a clear view of the approaching English army. Archie Forbes had accompanied Randolph, to whose division he, with his retainers, was attached. Randolph had with him 500 pikemen, whom he had withdrawn from his division in order to carry out his appointed task of seeing that the English did not pass along the low ground at the edge of the carse behind St. Ninians to the relief of Stirling; but so absorbed were knights and men-at-arms in watching the magnificent array advancing against the Scottish position that they forgot to keep a watch over the low ground. Suddenly one of the men, who had straggled away into the village, ran up with the startling news that a large party of English horse had crossed the corner of the carse, and had already reached the low ground beyond the church.
"A rose has fallen from your chaplet, Randolph," the king said angrily.
Without a moment's loss of time Randolph and Archie Forbes set off with the spearmen at a run, and succeeded in heading the horsemen at the hamlet of Newhouse. The mail clad horsemen, confident in their numbers, their armour, and horses, laid their lances in rest, struck spurs into their steeds, and, led by Sir William Daynecourt, charged down upon the Scotch spearmen. Two hundred of these consisted of Archie Forbes' retainers, all veterans in war, and who had more than once, shoulder to shoulder, repelled the onslaught of the mailed chivalry of England. Animated by the voices of their lord and Randolph, these, with Moray's own pikemen, threw themselves into a solid square, and, surrounded by a hedge of spears, steadily received the furious onslaught of the cavalry. Daynecourt and many of his men were at the first onslaught unhorsed and slain, and those who followed were repulsed. Again and again they charged down upon the pikemen, but the dense array of spears was more than a match for the lances of the cavalry, and as the horses were wounded and fell, or their riders were unhorsed, men rushed out from the square, and with axe and dagger completed the work. Still the English pressed them hard, and Douglas, from the distance, seeing how hotly the pikemen were pressed by the cavalry, begged the king to allow him to go to Randolph's assistance. Bruce, however, would suffer no change in his position, and said that Randolph must stand or fall by himself. Douglas, however, urged that he should be allowed to go forward with the small body of retainers which he had with him. The king consented, and Douglas set off with his men.
When the English saw him approach they recoiled somewhat from the square, and Douglas, being now better able to see what was going on, commanded his followers to halt, saying that Randolph would speedily prove victorious without their help, and were they now to take part in the struggle they would only lessen the credit of those who had already all but won the victory. Seeing the enemy in some confusion from the appearance of the reinforcement, Randolph and Archie now gave the word for their men to charge, and these, rushing on with spear and axe, completed the discomfiture of the enemy, killed many, and forced the rest to take flight. Numbers, however, were taken. Randolph is said to have had but two men killed in the struggle.
To Tame A Horse And Ride It To War
The men emerged over the crest of a ridge and guided their horses along a tree line, skirting a wide meadow. They picked their way along narrow trails, climbing higher into the Sierra until a panorama of snowcapped peaks and a broad green valley unfolded beneath them.There's quite a bit more at the link. We may see a swelling in our ranks.
The men, Special Forces soldiers dressed in jeans and other civilian clothes, led their horses into a thick stand of pine trees, where they dismounted and let the horses drink from a clear mountain stream before breaking out their own rations.
At this remote training area high in the Sierra, the U.S. Marine Corps is reviving the horsemanship skills that were once a key part of the nation's armed forces but were cast aside when tanks and armored vehicles replaced them. The need to bring these skills back was driven home in Afghanistan in 2001, when the first Special Forces soldiers to arrive found themselves fighting on horseback alongside tribesmen in rugged terrain without roads. Many had never ridden a horse before.
"We don't want to reinvent anything," said Marine Capt. Seth Miller, the officer in charge of formal schools at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center. "These are skills that were lost."
Marine instructors are teaching the students, most of them Army Special Forces soldiers, how to control horses, care for them and load packs. The students are taught how to calculate routes and distances for rides and what to look for when purchasing horses from locals. For example, checking teeth is a good way to determine age and avoid getting ripped off by a farmer trying to pass off an ancient mule or horse.
In a throwback to the old Wild West days, instructors are considering training soldiers in how to shoot from a moving horse....
More on the IRS Email Backup Firm
So apparently the IRS decided not to renew that company's contract to back up their emails, just weeks after Lerner's hard drive crashed... and just weeks before other crashes of drives of involved parties.
So the first question is, what does Sonasoft have? Were they obligated to destroy, or to retain, the records that the IRS had already paid for them to store?
The second question is, did the IRS decide to go with a different firm -- or to stop backing up its emails?
So the first question is, what does Sonasoft have? Were they obligated to destroy, or to retain, the records that the IRS had already paid for them to store?
The second question is, did the IRS decide to go with a different firm -- or to stop backing up its emails?
Public Radio Continues to Shine
This week on NPR: 'Speaking of budgetary concerns, a country doesn't really have to have an army, you know.'
Maleficent and Benghazi
Last night I had a date with my one-and-only, and for reasons I won't discuss we ended up seeing this damnable new take on Sleeping Beauty.
Now I wasn't expecting much. What little I see of current Hollywood doesn't leave me impressed with its imagination; and "reimaginings" without imagination don't do much for me. But I walked out of this one spitting mad. Indulge me a moment while I say why.
If you haven't seen it (lucky souls), the concept is perfectly simple. The king from Sleeping Beauty owed a great debt to the "bad fairy," but instead betrayed her to gain power for himself. (The poor thing didn't understand how greedy men were 'til later...her Green credentials are spotless.) It relates to his desire, and his father's, to steal the peaceful woodlands from the magical creatures who inhabit them -- and if they'd only leave them alone, or make amends and give back what they stole, all would be well. The fairy's curse is a burst of understandable righteous anger at the king's perfidy; but he's able to get a measure of mercy out of her just by begging on his knees, that being the right position to check his privilege. And later on the conscience-ridden Maleficent does everything she can to fix the problem. And in the end "true love" is revealed to be, not a romantic attachment between man and woman (which our female lead denies, and she's never proven wrong), but pity and remorse for a victim.
I expected some genuflections to the prevailing orthodoxies of PC and "Cultural Marxism." I didn't expect them to replace the whole story. If you're a civilized ruler under attack...white male type...well, that settles it, you must have provoked it. In a classic heroic fairy tale (or even a healthy cartoon version), there's evil in the world and it's got to be fought, and kings, princes, knights, and soldiers have an especial duty to do so. In this? There's no evil but what you create yourself; no one's out to attack you unless you provoked it; the "victim card" not only explains but excuses every evil; and those who can play it have all the noblest sentiments. In fact, no one except victims has any noble sentiments, not in this film they don't. The story's been rewritten to include hundreds of soldiers, but they're either villains or faceless dragon fodder, and everyone from king to peasant would be better off without them. The cartoon was truer to life.
It seems to me this new take on the classic tale is the same viewpoint that inspired certain parties' incorrect assertions on the subject of Benghazi. I don't think they invented the "video" story out of whole cloth. I think it was their first instinct. Americans under attack by Muslims? It must be our fault. We must have provoked them. Send in the troops? Get our people out at once? Perish the thought -- that might provoke them some more. Better to show an appeasing image. And when the first instinct turned out to be untrue...it was still the natural story to run with. Teach every child that view; then our future leaders are secured.
Apparently now not only our schools and our press, but our fairytales as well, must teach suicidalism.. This civilization's going to be hard to rebuild. I think all that's left for Hollywood is to retell Aesop's fable of the Wolves and the Sheep to explain how it's all the Sheepdogs' fault. Which, come to that, is just what the wolves were saying.
Now I wasn't expecting much. What little I see of current Hollywood doesn't leave me impressed with its imagination; and "reimaginings" without imagination don't do much for me. But I walked out of this one spitting mad. Indulge me a moment while I say why.
If you haven't seen it (lucky souls), the concept is perfectly simple. The king from Sleeping Beauty owed a great debt to the "bad fairy," but instead betrayed her to gain power for himself. (The poor thing didn't understand how greedy men were 'til later...her Green credentials are spotless.) It relates to his desire, and his father's, to steal the peaceful woodlands from the magical creatures who inhabit them -- and if they'd only leave them alone, or make amends and give back what they stole, all would be well. The fairy's curse is a burst of understandable righteous anger at the king's perfidy; but he's able to get a measure of mercy out of her just by begging on his knees, that being the right position to check his privilege. And later on the conscience-ridden Maleficent does everything she can to fix the problem. And in the end "true love" is revealed to be, not a romantic attachment between man and woman (which our female lead denies, and she's never proven wrong), but pity and remorse for a victim.
I expected some genuflections to the prevailing orthodoxies of PC and "Cultural Marxism." I didn't expect them to replace the whole story. If you're a civilized ruler under attack...white male type...well, that settles it, you must have provoked it. In a classic heroic fairy tale (or even a healthy cartoon version), there's evil in the world and it's got to be fought, and kings, princes, knights, and soldiers have an especial duty to do so. In this? There's no evil but what you create yourself; no one's out to attack you unless you provoked it; the "victim card" not only explains but excuses every evil; and those who can play it have all the noblest sentiments. In fact, no one except victims has any noble sentiments, not in this film they don't. The story's been rewritten to include hundreds of soldiers, but they're either villains or faceless dragon fodder, and everyone from king to peasant would be better off without them. The cartoon was truer to life.
It seems to me this new take on the classic tale is the same viewpoint that inspired certain parties' incorrect assertions on the subject of Benghazi. I don't think they invented the "video" story out of whole cloth. I think it was their first instinct. Americans under attack by Muslims? It must be our fault. We must have provoked them. Send in the troops? Get our people out at once? Perish the thought -- that might provoke them some more. Better to show an appeasing image. And when the first instinct turned out to be untrue...it was still the natural story to run with. Teach every child that view; then our future leaders are secured.
Apparently now not only our schools and our press, but our fairytales as well, must teach suicidalism.. This civilization's going to be hard to rebuild. I think all that's left for Hollywood is to retell Aesop's fable of the Wolves and the Sheep to explain how it's all the Sheepdogs' fault. Which, come to that, is just what the wolves were saying.
Harvey Mansfield Decides To Retire
At least, I assume so, given his decision to publish this as an employee of Harvard.
Well, the man was born in 1932. It's no surprise he might be ready to "spend more time with his family."
Well, the man was born in 1932. It's no surprise he might be ready to "spend more time with his family."
Who embodied evil before Hitler?
Tyler Cowan muses on what historical or literary figure people referred to before Hitler became everyone's stock idea of a villain? It turns out that Pharaoh and Judas were favorite choices for millennia. Commenters chime in with nominations for Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and other barbarian invaders. Nero, Caligula, and Domitian fell out of favor a while back.
Once Hitler came along, he really enjoyed a consensus. This is a Western perspective, of course.
Once Hitler came along, he really enjoyed a consensus. This is a Western perspective, of course.
"They Are Excommunicated"
This is perhaps less directed to the ‘Ndrangheta themselves than to the priests who serve in their communities. What the Pope said was not that he was excommunicating the mafia, but that they were excommunicating themselves by their choices of associations and actions, their "adoration of evil and contempt for the common good."
So priests in southern Italy should refuse them Communion, or a Catholic burial should they die without reconciliation.
It's a significant move, and I wonder why it has never been done before.
But this is the same Pope who insisted on ditching the bulletproof glass.
So priests in southern Italy should refuse them Communion, or a Catholic burial should they die without reconciliation.
It's a significant move, and I wonder why it has never been done before.
But this is the same Pope who insisted on ditching the bulletproof glass.
"It's true that anything could happen, but let's face it, at my age I don't have much to lose," he told Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia in an interview published Friday and reported on in English by Vatican Radio. "I know that something could happen to me, but it's in the hands of God."So maybe the answer's as simple as that. He is not afraid.
"Lions Ate Him."
Nick at Ranger Up has a good story about the time he was almost eaten by a lion during a college trip to Africa.
Interestinger and interestinger
How would you like to be the CEO of the company to which the IRS outsourced its data backup?
Well, I'm sure it's all a big misunderstanding. Or else a lot more people are planning to take the fifth soon, and mostly the latter.
Well, I'm sure it's all a big misunderstanding. Or else a lot more people are planning to take the fifth soon, and mostly the latter.
Regulatory failure
I'm reading John Allison's "The Financial Crisis," a free-market take on the collapse that precipitated the Great Recession. He's been discussing the moral hazard of deposit insurance, a difficult topic for me. I've known since the S&L crisis in the mid-1980's, which created the wave of bankruptcies on which I cut my teeth as a young lawyer, that deposit insurance threatens a dangerous spiral in interest paid on consumer deposits, followed by riskier bank investments needed to generate the higher interest. Without deposit insurance, a bank that pays too high an interest rate on consumer deposits will face a corrective mechanism: the difficulty of finding safe borrowers who can pay high interest on loans. If the bank takes too many wild flyers on its borrowers, it goes broke, and its depositors lose their money. Depositors who don't want to lose their money won't deposit it in a bank with a reputation for wild-eyed lending.
No one likes this disciplinary mechanism, because it tends to lead to panics and bank runs, especially on the part of small mom-and-pop depositors with all their liquid eggs in one basket. Politically and practically, we're going to have deposit insurance one way or another. Allison points out, however, that even with deposit insurance, people with deposits over the insured limit can exert useful pressure on banks to moderate their appetite for making risky loans. But in the run-up to the 2008/2009 financial crisis, the uninsured-depositor disciplinary mechanism broke down.
In July 2008, regulators shut down IndyMac, with loans (assets) of $32 billion and deposits (liabilities) of $19 billion, without opting to cover any of the $1 billion (5%) of its deposits that were uninsured, (that is, deposits exceeding $100,000 per customer). It was the largest collapse of an FDIC-insured institution since Continental Illinois in 1984, and it hit the public hard. Five percent of deposits being uninsured may not seem like a lot, but the public was nervous, and it didn't help that newscasts showed unhappy depositors lined up at windows.
So the stage was set for real jumpiness over the summer. Regulators had known for most of the year that failure was inevitable at Washington Mutual, the country's largest savings & loan, with assets in mid-2008 of $308 billion and deposits of $188 billion. Whether because of the IndyMac experience, general jumpiness in the real estate market, or machinations by regulators and their cronies (the last possibility is the subject of litigation that hasn't yet quit, six years later), WaMu suffered a $16 billion bank run in September 2008 just before regulators shut it down and sold its assets to J.P. Morgan for a pittance. Regulators, in no mood to spark an even more widespread bank run, made a fateful decision to cover all uninsured deposits.
Here is where Allison argues the biggest mistake was made. It would have been possible to cover the uninsured deposits with taxpayer money. That would have been politically poisonous, of course, but infuriated taxpayers could have done little about it in the short run. Instead, however, regulators dumped the entire hit on WaMu's bondholders: that is, the capital markets that had provided liquidity to the bank via traditional loans rather than through insured deposits. Unlike taxpayers, the capital markets could and did retaliate instantly. Allison, who ran BB&T (a real-estate-oriented Atlanta bank), reports that the capital markets had been tight during that troubled summer, but BB&T had just succeeded in floating a bond issue before WaMu failed. The day after the feds stiffed the WaMu bondholders, the capital market for banks dried up without a trace. Allison argues that this event was far more damaging to the liquidity of the financial markets than the failure of Lehman Brothers that same month. He also argues that it was D.C.'s panic over the dried-up capital markets resulting from the WaMu decision that drove the TARP bank-bailout bill later in the year.
No one likes this disciplinary mechanism, because it tends to lead to panics and bank runs, especially on the part of small mom-and-pop depositors with all their liquid eggs in one basket. Politically and practically, we're going to have deposit insurance one way or another. Allison points out, however, that even with deposit insurance, people with deposits over the insured limit can exert useful pressure on banks to moderate their appetite for making risky loans. But in the run-up to the 2008/2009 financial crisis, the uninsured-depositor disciplinary mechanism broke down.
In July 2008, regulators shut down IndyMac, with loans (assets) of $32 billion and deposits (liabilities) of $19 billion, without opting to cover any of the $1 billion (5%) of its deposits that were uninsured, (that is, deposits exceeding $100,000 per customer). It was the largest collapse of an FDIC-insured institution since Continental Illinois in 1984, and it hit the public hard. Five percent of deposits being uninsured may not seem like a lot, but the public was nervous, and it didn't help that newscasts showed unhappy depositors lined up at windows.
So the stage was set for real jumpiness over the summer. Regulators had known for most of the year that failure was inevitable at Washington Mutual, the country's largest savings & loan, with assets in mid-2008 of $308 billion and deposits of $188 billion. Whether because of the IndyMac experience, general jumpiness in the real estate market, or machinations by regulators and their cronies (the last possibility is the subject of litigation that hasn't yet quit, six years later), WaMu suffered a $16 billion bank run in September 2008 just before regulators shut it down and sold its assets to J.P. Morgan for a pittance. Regulators, in no mood to spark an even more widespread bank run, made a fateful decision to cover all uninsured deposits.
Here is where Allison argues the biggest mistake was made. It would have been possible to cover the uninsured deposits with taxpayer money. That would have been politically poisonous, of course, but infuriated taxpayers could have done little about it in the short run. Instead, however, regulators dumped the entire hit on WaMu's bondholders: that is, the capital markets that had provided liquidity to the bank via traditional loans rather than through insured deposits. Unlike taxpayers, the capital markets could and did retaliate instantly. Allison, who ran BB&T (a real-estate-oriented Atlanta bank), reports that the capital markets had been tight during that troubled summer, but BB&T had just succeeded in floating a bond issue before WaMu failed. The day after the feds stiffed the WaMu bondholders, the capital market for banks dried up without a trace. Allison argues that this event was far more damaging to the liquidity of the financial markets than the failure of Lehman Brothers that same month. He also argues that it was D.C.'s panic over the dried-up capital markets resulting from the WaMu decision that drove the TARP bank-bailout bill later in the year.
Solstice
O thou who passest thro’ our valleys in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitchedst here thy golden tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard
Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car
Rode o’er the deep of heaven: beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy valleys, on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.
Our bards are famed who strike the silver wire:
Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.
-William Blake
Paying Attention
A friend, veteran, and fellow biker sends:
Today was the date for the publication of my very favorite annual poll, the Gallup Confidence in Institutions Poll. As you know from hearing me talk about this in the past, all of our democratic and political organs have been suffering a long-term decline in public confidence. Congress is now down to seven percent! None of our major political institutions now command "a lot" or "quite a bit" of confidence from a third of Americans.
The police still command a majority (though still behind 'small business' and 'the military'). So clearly my friend's sentiment is not widely shared.
Nevertheless it's an interesting point. The biker's loyalties are unknown, and he has adopted a posture that suggests he is dangerous. On the other hand, the shotgun he's carrying is of limited hazard. The policeman belongs to a unit, with military-grade gear, and has the backing of the government. Obviously the policeman is far, far more dangerous.
But people trust the police, and even more the military, though they don't trust the government that they serve. That's interesting. It seems like there's got to be a kind of very serious tension there: trusting the servant, but not the master. Or do we trust that those in arms are gentlemen, and will at last do the right thing no matter how corrupt their leaders might be?
Today was the date for the publication of my very favorite annual poll, the Gallup Confidence in Institutions Poll. As you know from hearing me talk about this in the past, all of our democratic and political organs have been suffering a long-term decline in public confidence. Congress is now down to seven percent! None of our major political institutions now command "a lot" or "quite a bit" of confidence from a third of Americans.
The police still command a majority (though still behind 'small business' and 'the military'). So clearly my friend's sentiment is not widely shared.
Nevertheless it's an interesting point. The biker's loyalties are unknown, and he has adopted a posture that suggests he is dangerous. On the other hand, the shotgun he's carrying is of limited hazard. The policeman belongs to a unit, with military-grade gear, and has the backing of the government. Obviously the policeman is far, far more dangerous.
But people trust the police, and even more the military, though they don't trust the government that they serve. That's interesting. It seems like there's got to be a kind of very serious tension there: trusting the servant, but not the master. Or do we trust that those in arms are gentlemen, and will at last do the right thing no matter how corrupt their leaders might be?
Misunderstanding Evolution
Where do people get the idea that "evolution" is a kind of uplifting arrow?
That's what evolution is about. It doesn't have a moral trajectory.
Oh, well. Here's your bumper sticker.
A star was born this week in Stockton, California: Jeremy Meeks, a 30-year-old convicted felon whose hunky mugshot — featuring dreamy slate-blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones — has turned him into a viral heartthrob....What on earth are you talking about? Strong sexual attraction to a man with low ethics and little impulse control is a great way for a woman to reproduce. Thus she brings about the survival of the species, who will be physically strong and with that helpful lack of impulse control (unless we get a mutation...).
“This is a really great example of an evolutionary lag — how women still find things attractive that don’t necessarily translate well into the modern world,” Vinita Mehta, a Washington, D.C.–based psychotherapist, tells Yahoo Shine. Because while being muscular and tough enough to thrive in dangerous situations might have been necessary for human survival back in caveman times, “these are not the things that help us survive and reproduce today,” notes Mehta, who is writing a book titled “Paleo Love” about how Stone Age genes can complicate modern relationships.
That's what evolution is about. It doesn't have a moral trajectory.
Oh, well. Here's your bumper sticker.
Virtutis Gloria Merces
A friend writes from the road:
I am in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma. A guy who just reminded me a lot of you just helped me reattach my bumper in a gas station parking lot. Thank you, because I know you would've done the same thing for some poor crying girl.That's just how it should be.
"Colonel" Sinclair to Retire
Apparently the end of the saga of once-Brigade General Sinclair, who fought a more successful PR campaign against his prosecution by the Army than he did an actual campaign as deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne. In spite of confessing to numerous violations of the UCMJ which could have led to a sentence of 20 years in Leavenworth, he will be allowed to serve no time whatsoever and retire with his pension.
However, he will lose two grades, and retire as a lieutenant colonel -- still a field grade officer, but no longer a general officer.
His retirement pay will come in somewhere between $3,000 and $4,200 a month as I understand it. The per capita income in the county where I live is $16,700, so a man could live quite well on what he'll be pulling in.
But if he was a lover of honor, the price at least is high: once a man who was respected for his service and career, he retires in disgrace, a confessed oathbreaker.
However, he will lose two grades, and retire as a lieutenant colonel -- still a field grade officer, but no longer a general officer.
His retirement pay will come in somewhere between $3,000 and $4,200 a month as I understand it. The per capita income in the county where I live is $16,700, so a man could live quite well on what he'll be pulling in.
But if he was a lover of honor, the price at least is high: once a man who was respected for his service and career, he retires in disgrace, a confessed oathbreaker.
Ah, the Patriarchy
A "Feminist Father" wears a T-shirt with the following "Rules for Dating My Daughter":
So, if he's a "Feminist Father" for declaring these rules, do we have a "Feminist System of Law" as well? I thought we were living in some sort of patriarchy -- even a rape culture. How surprising to learn that, instead, the positive laws perfectly adhere to Feminist principles on the subject of greatest interest to them.
1. I don’t make the rulesThis is, of course, just as accurately a statement of the law. It's exactly what the law says, it's exactly how any American court will rule should a relevant case appear before it.
2. You don’t make the rules
3. She makes the rules
4. Her body, her rules
So, if he's a "Feminist Father" for declaring these rules, do we have a "Feminist System of Law" as well? I thought we were living in some sort of patriarchy -- even a rape culture. How surprising to learn that, instead, the positive laws perfectly adhere to Feminist principles on the subject of greatest interest to them.
Cleansing
Starting with "The Washington Racecards," the National Review Online is soliciting our help in coming up with a new and more appropriate name for the sports franchise that dare not speak its name. "The Redtapes" is good, I think.
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