It occurred to me the other day that a lot of Tea Partiers and other sundry and assorted Conservative types tend to treat the US Constitution as if it were in a civil law system rather than a common law system.
In a civil law system, when a judge or court makes a decision, it does not set a precedent that binds future judges or courts. All a court has to look at are the statutes in question and the facts of the case. This is similar to the old "What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not understand?" rhetoric I've heard many times in discussions of the 2nd Amendment.
Stare decisis, or precedent, is an essential feature of common law systems like ours, which we inherited from the English. You can't just look at the law and the facts in a common law system. You must also look at precedents set by previous courts. As a result, we can't just read the text of the Constitution itself to understand what is and is not constitutional.
Although I think the system we ended up with was brilliant, I personally think the Founders messed up when it came to the judiciary. They have become a rolling constitutional convention because of the role of precedent. I have thought quite a bit about how to solve that problem, but maybe a simple solution would be to strip USSC rulings on the Constitution of precedent.
Of course, I am not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV. My suggestion would probably wreck the whole system and bring about the Fimbulwinter and eventual Apocalypse. But if you ignore that, it's kind of an interesting idea.
An Amusing Error
In checking the spelling of "ghetto" for my previous post, I searched for "getto" (good thing I checked) and came up with this Urban Dictionary entry:
The more Getto verions [sic] of "Ghetto" for those who are too poor to afford the silent "H"
Rebecca Tuval and Philosophy's Existential Crisis
Oliver Traldi, a writer with an MA in philosophy, wrote about the Rebecca Tuval brouhaha in his article A Line in the Sand for Academic Philosophy. If you are interested, I thought the whole article was worthwhile.
He summarized the Tuvel affair thus:
This is fairly well-known background for those who have been paying attention to this. What interests me more is his assessment of how the field of philosophy got to this point. He makes several points, but one of them is:
Traldi ends with a call to save the field from mob justice, from which I got the title for this post. I think the humanities are worth saving, but I'm not quite sure how it works out yet.
He summarized the Tuvel affair thus:
Rebecca Tuvel is an assistant professor at Rhodes College ... Her essay “In Defense of Transracialism” (Hypatia 32.2 [Spring 2017], pp. 263-78) is, to be fair, not consistently scintillating, creative, or convincing. However, few philosophy papers have any of those qualities, and almost none have all three. What the paper does do is lay out relatively clearly the motivation for a fairly intuitive argument. I’ll give my version of it here:
...
- We have compelling reasons to accept the identity claims of transgender individuals.
- Transracial identification is relevantly similar or analogous to transgender identification.
- The reasons commonly given for not accepting transracial identification are either not compelling or not relevant.
- From 1, 2, and 3, the balance of reasons compels us to accept the identity claims of transracial individuals.
- If the balance of reasons compels us to accept something, we should accept it.
- From 4 and 5, we should accept the identity claims of transracial individuals.
Other philosophers wrote and signed an open letter calling for the paper’s retraction. ...
The letter’s most important point is hidden in the first complaint: that Tuvel “uses vocabulary and frameworks not recognized, accepted, or adopted by the conventions of the relevant subfields.” In the Daily Nous comments, academics in these subfields struggled to identify precisely which arguments Tuvel failed to cite or address, or where her thinking might have gone wrong on a more than superficial level. Indeed, many philosophers of both gender and race have come out against retraction. But “the relevant subfields” are not really the academic studies of gender and race. They are the political interests and values associated with a certain conception of those topics. The real complaint is that anyone who publishes in a journal like Hypatia, itself a blatantly activist organ, ought to share those politics. In turn, the necessary politics are built in to the “vocabulary and frameworks” used by the academics. This is ideological alignment dressed up as intellectual expertise.
This is fairly well-known background for those who have been paying attention to this. What interests me more is his assessment of how the field of philosophy got to this point. He makes several points, but one of them is:
Another concerns the methodology of philosophical ethics. Much of ethics is quasi-scientific: it involves investigating our intuitions about particular cases and generalizing them into a broadly explanatory theory. However, different people have different intuitions. Norms about the nature of intuitive reasoning (e.g. “reflective equilibrium”) and about how much weight philosophers should give to other people’s intuitions have never quite taken hold, except in the “experimental philosophy” movement. In the modern academy, with its myriad specializations, it is easy to put together a “relevant subfield” of philosophical ethics not by linking together a set of situations, puzzles, or theories but by finding a group of people who share the same intuitions about cases. The actual difficult work of ethics is completely removed, because people with deep disagreements can, if they wish, simply read different journals, go to different conferences, and so on. I will leave a comparison to the state of American politics as an exercise for the reader.That's exactly what I think has happened throughout the humanities, although it is not universal yet. It might provide us with part of an answer as well. Non-Progressive academics shouldn't just sequester themselves in little intellectual ghettos, but citation is life: making sure to include non-Progressive voices in the conversation could help. (If an academic publishes and no one cites the work, was the work really published?) Similarly, an academic community could form that replaces a certain subfield. At this point, I feel like that is actually a necessity. Race, ethnicity, and gender are far too important to leave to the loonies.
Traldi ends with a call to save the field from mob justice, from which I got the title for this post. I think the humanities are worth saving, but I'm not quite sure how it works out yet.
IRS Execs Think Their Lives are at Risk in TEA Party Case
That's interesting. What are you afraid to tell us, I wonder?
"This documentation, as the court will see, makes very personal references and contains graphic, profane and disturbing language that would lead to unnecessary intrusion and embarrassment if made public," their attorneys argued in a recent court brief. "Public dissemination of their deposition testimony would put their lives in serious jeopardy."This sounds like the rare case in which intrusion and embarrassment are wholly appropriate.
Plato and Cognitive Bias
One of the ways in which we hide how similar our ancestors are to ourselves, Bertrand Russel noted, is by inventing technical terms for things we knew all along.
It may be hard for contemporary thinkers who are schooled in our advanced forms of mathematics to think there is much to be gained by learning the ancient forms as well. Yet a new way of thinking about the same problems offers unexpected benefits. The philosophical investigation into the nature of mathematicals offers additional benefits. What we often learn is how difficult it is to be sure of what we think we know. Thus:
[T]he richest precedent for behavioural economics is in the works of ancient Greek philosophers. Almost 2,500 years before the current vogue for behavioural economics, Plato was identifying and seeking to understand the predictable irrationalities of the human mind. He did not verify them with the techniques of modern experimental psychology, but many of his insights are remarkably similar to the descriptions of the cognitive biases found by Kahneman and Tversky. Seminal papers in behavioural economics are highly cited everywhere from business and medical schools to the social sciences and the corporate world. But the earlier explorations of the same phenomenon by Greek philosophy are rarely appreciated. Noticing this continuity is both an interesting point of intellectual history and a potentially useful resource: Plato not only identified various specific weaknesses in human cognition, he also offered powerful proposals for how to overcome these biases and improve our reasoning and behaviour.Plato was also very good at math, a point that many contemporary readers miss. The Greeks didn't have algebra, but they did have a highly-advanced approach to geometry that allowed them to solve many complex mathematical problems. Thus, while you might not expect Plato to provide a criticism of contemporary statistical mathematics (since he did not have access to such systems), in fact he's aware of a number of the problems such systems will encounter because he has thought a great deal about the real nature of mathematical objects like numbers and shapes.
Many of Plato’s dialogues dramatise the habits and processes that lead humans to false conclusions. He depicts people believing what they want or what they are predisposed to believe (confirmation bias); asserting whatever comes most readily to mind (availability bias); reversing their opinions about identical propositions based on the language in which the propositions are presented (framing); refusing to relinquish current opinions simply because these happen to be the opinions they currently possess (a cognitive version of loss aversion); making false inferences based on the size and representativeness of a sample of a broader population (representativeness heuristic); and judging new information based on salient current information (a version of anchoring). And this is only a partial inventory of the mental errors that he catalogues and dramatises.
It may be hard for contemporary thinkers who are schooled in our advanced forms of mathematics to think there is much to be gained by learning the ancient forms as well. Yet a new way of thinking about the same problems offers unexpected benefits. The philosophical investigation into the nature of mathematicals offers additional benefits. What we often learn is how difficult it is to be sure of what we think we know. Thus:
Intellectual humility and overconfidence can stem from purely cognitive processes, but they are also correctly understood as moral achievements or failings. Someone who always thinks that he is right about everything... is making a moral as well as a mental mistake. Similarly, the cultivation of intellectual humility is, in part, the cultivation of an ethical virtue.
Nussbaum's Jefferson Lecture
It's appropriately ancient, and as always with Nussbaum, I wonder how much more she knows about her goals than she makes clear to her audience. We must transform anger with honor, she says -- or, at least, that Athena did. She does not go on to conclude that we can, and yet it is the clear and correct conclusion from her argument.
The effect is transformative, not just of the Furies but for Athens as well. Honor must be given to be received, and when one is brought into the community that gives and shows honor, peace becomes possible.
Yet then Nussbaum, later in her address, invokes honor in a negative way that seems to undermine her entire argument. I wonder why she does, aside from the clear intent to insult Donald Trump.
Who would bind their lives with such a person, as in love or the marriage that could bring out a family? The fight for what she calls status is not insubstantial, but rather, in earlier societies it played a crucial role in establishing the conditions for attaining the 'substantial things.'
Of course, some might love a man with a bad reputation -- or a woman, like the one John Wayne's character comes to love in Stagecoach. They might because they come to know the individual, and not just the reputation. But their election to trust the person in spite of his bad reputation -- that, too, is a kind of honor. And this honor, as honor does, transforms.
As the drama begins, the Furies are described as repulsive and horrifying. They are said to be black, disgusting; their eyes drip a hideous liquid. Apollo even says they vomit up clots of blood that they have ingested from their prey. They belong, he says, in some barbarian tyranny where cruelty reigns.Nussbaum says they are offered "places of honor," but also "reverence" -- and reverence is a form of honor too. In return, what must they do? They must "listen to the voice of persuasion" -- and that, too, is a kind of honoring. First, it is a kind of honor because it is a show of special respect to listen to the voice while being open to being persuaded. We don't take advice from just anyone, nor lay aside long-established habits. Athena is demanding honor from them, and offering them honor in return.
Nor, when they awaken, do the Furies give the lie to these grim descriptions. As Clytemnestra’s ghost calls them, they do not speak, but simply make animal noises, moaning and whining. When they do begin to speak, their only words are “get him get him get him get him,” as close to a predator’s hunting cry as the genre allows....
Unchanged, these Furies could not be at the foundation of a legal system in a society committed to the rule of law. You don’t put wild dogs in a cage and come out with justice. But the Furies do not make the transition to democracy unchanged. Until quite late in the drama, they are still their bestial selves, threatening to disgorge their venom on the land. Then, however, Athena persuades them to alter themselves so as to join her enterprise. “Lull to repose the bitter force of your black wave of anger,” she tells them. But of course that means a virtual change of identity, so bound up are they with anger’s obsessive force. She offers them incentives to join the democracy: a place of honor, reverence from the citizens—but only if they adopt a new range of sentiments, substituting future-directed benevolence for retribution. Perhaps most fundamental of all, they must listen to the voice of persuasion.
The effect is transformative, not just of the Furies but for Athens as well. Honor must be given to be received, and when one is brought into the community that gives and shows honor, peace becomes possible.
Yet then Nussbaum, later in her address, invokes honor in a negative way that seems to undermine her entire argument. I wonder why she does, aside from the clear intent to insult Donald Trump.
Elaborate codes of honor and status led, indeed, to constant status-anxiety and to many duels responding to purported insults. What’s wrong with the obsession with status is that life is not all about reputation, it is about more substantial things: love, justice, work, family. We all know people today who are obsessed with what other people think of them, who constantly scan the Internet to see who has been insulting them.Indeed it is the biggest problem with Donald Trump that he does not know how to give honor, only how to demand it for himself. Yet reputation (another sort of honor: you have a good reputation if people say good things about you, which is a way of honoring you) enables the 'substantial things' she mentions. Consider work, as Louis L'amour often reminded his readers when he writes about why people might have killed over an insult like being called a "liar." Who will work with someone who is called a liar in the streets? In a poorer time when reputations tended to be well-known among smaller communities, such a name could mean the end of your ability to participate in work at all.
Who would bind their lives with such a person, as in love or the marriage that could bring out a family? The fight for what she calls status is not insubstantial, but rather, in earlier societies it played a crucial role in establishing the conditions for attaining the 'substantial things.'
Of course, some might love a man with a bad reputation -- or a woman, like the one John Wayne's character comes to love in Stagecoach. They might because they come to know the individual, and not just the reputation. But their election to trust the person in spite of his bad reputation -- that, too, is a kind of honor. And this honor, as honor does, transforms.
Mike Pence is the Devil, Mother's Day Edition
Now that the 'ctrl-left' is pretty sure it's got Trump on the ropes -- no doubt he'll be impeached any day, since all the newspapers say he should be -- it's time to move on to demonizing Mike Pence. We got round one out of his horrible refusal to dine with women besides his wife; well, at least, fifteen years ago he felt that way and nobody bothered to check if he still did.
Round two: he sometimes calls his wife "Mother."
If there are so many reasons to dislike Pence, why include this strange tidbit about how he refers to his wife in their own home? They make it sound weird, which to me suggests that the author is childless. Pence and his wife have three children. In a house full of kids, everyone but you is calling her "Mother," and if you want to communicate effectively with those children you'll adopt their usage when speaking with them. So too with her, who is likely to tell the children information they need to know about "Daddy" or "Father." In their own house, eating off their own china, it's not strange that they'd fall into what must have become a common mode of speaking in that particular context over decades of child-rearing.
But of course that's the point, isn't it? Child-rearing is weird now, at least among the readership of Rolling Stone. Being a Christian is weird. Taking your wedding vows seriously is weird. What could be stranger than seeing yourself and your spouse, inside your own house, as related to the context of that household you built in the role of mother and father?
These things used to be ordinary. They almost defined ordinary. Now they're proof of moral wickedness: a failure, I suppose, to evolve.
But don't these same people tell us that evolution is random and without purpose or meaning? Motherhood, so necessary for the process of evolution, is not lacking in these things.
Round two: he sometimes calls his wife "Mother."
One unlucky legislator stuck next to Pence tried to make conversation, but found even at dinner she couldn't shift Pence off his talking points. Gov. Pence shouted to his wife, Karen, his closest adviser, at the other end of the table.There's other stuff in this profile: he's a Christian, but not the kind of Christian who thinks that progressive social programs are the ideal tool for religious expression; there are unsubstantiated accusations from people who used to know him, or who like what he did but don't like how he did it; he's way too religious for the author's taste.
"Mother, Mother, who prepared our meal this evening?"
The legislators looked at one another, speaking with their eyes: He just called his wife "Mother."
Maybe it was a joke, the legislator reasoned. But a few minutes later, Pence shouted again.
"Mother, Mother, whose china are we eating on?"
Mother Pence went on a long discourse about where the china was from. A little later, the legislators stumbled out, wondering what was weirder: Pence's inability to make conversation, or calling his wife "Mother" in the second decade of the 21st century.
If there are so many reasons to dislike Pence, why include this strange tidbit about how he refers to his wife in their own home? They make it sound weird, which to me suggests that the author is childless. Pence and his wife have three children. In a house full of kids, everyone but you is calling her "Mother," and if you want to communicate effectively with those children you'll adopt their usage when speaking with them. So too with her, who is likely to tell the children information they need to know about "Daddy" or "Father." In their own house, eating off their own china, it's not strange that they'd fall into what must have become a common mode of speaking in that particular context over decades of child-rearing.
But of course that's the point, isn't it? Child-rearing is weird now, at least among the readership of Rolling Stone. Being a Christian is weird. Taking your wedding vows seriously is weird. What could be stranger than seeing yourself and your spouse, inside your own house, as related to the context of that household you built in the role of mother and father?
These things used to be ordinary. They almost defined ordinary. Now they're proof of moral wickedness: a failure, I suppose, to evolve.
But don't these same people tell us that evolution is random and without purpose or meaning? Motherhood, so necessary for the process of evolution, is not lacking in these things.
Why Are We Doing This?
Early moves by insurers suggest that another round of price hikes and limited choices will greet insurance shoppers around the country when they start searching for next year's coverage on the public markets established by the Affordable Care Act.Before Obamacare, I had a policy I kept from 2003 until, years after it became a grandfathered plan I couldn't change in any way, I lost it because the company quit selling it. I was never in a position of having to go out each year and "search for next year's coverage." Now I am in exactly that position.
Before Obamacare, that plan that I had changed only in that the premiums went up slightly from year to year. After Obamacare, the cost tripled before the policy was discontinued.
Before Obamacare, that plan had a network I didn't even have to worry about because any doctor you happened upon would certainly be on it. If you got drug to the hospital for some reason, you didn't have to first check to see if everyone in that hospital (including the anesthesiologist) was on the plan. They would be on the plan. Now, you have to agree to pay charges without having any idea if your network includes anyone at that hospital.
Nor can you check, actually, as the ACA's website doesn't have fully updated information for this year. You can find out if they took the plan last year, but every year, networks narrow and prices increase.
Why are we doing this?
Dolly Parton Lights the Way
I just passed through Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The damage from last year's fires is still highly evident in that town and the surrounding country, and will be for some time. By coincidence one of my cousins is a civil engineer up that way, and he has his hands absolutely full trying to rebuild the hundreds and hundreds of structures that were destroyed -- indeed, I think he said it was a few thousand structures he had on his plate. There is a real shortage of engineers who are experienced working on mountainsides, and thus there isn't the flood of help from outside the Tennessee mountains that one would expect.
So it is with pleasure that I read about native daughter Dolly Parton's extraordinary generosity in helping her fellow folks. Having grown up in tremendous poverty, and then attained substantial wealth, she never forgets how hard life can be in those mountains.
So it is with pleasure that I read about native daughter Dolly Parton's extraordinary generosity in helping her fellow folks. Having grown up in tremendous poverty, and then attained substantial wealth, she never forgets how hard life can be in those mountains.
"The Ctrl-Left"
Via Anarchyball, an amusing term for the Antifa aspects of the left wing. It's meant as a parallel to the "alt-right," of course.
A Genuine Problem with the System
Reportedly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is calling for his prosecutors to -- as a matter of course -- seek the harshest possible charges with the longest possible prison terms when prosecuting cases.
Well, actually, that's not quite what he said.
I would have left a lot more room for that "good judgment" exercise by lower-level officials, rather than requiring high-level officials to sign off on such uses of judgment. Still, it's not an unreasonable policy on its face.
What makes it a problem is, then, the mandatory minimums that exist in the law. That's a problem for legislators, not the Justice Department. I agree with the analysis that such minimums are not appropriate as a general principle. Nevertheless, it's not on the Justice Department to refuse to enforce the law when a crime is "readily provable" just because the law is badly written. It's on Congress to fix the law.
UPDATE:
My congressman, Doug Collins of Georgia's Mighty 9th, is working on trying to reform the laws in the way I'm discussing here. Specifically, he is focused on dealing with the mental health aspects of crimes. Collins is a former Air Force chaplain whose father was a state trooper.
Well, actually, that's not quite what he said.
The policy memo says prosecutors should “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense” — something more likely to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. Those rules limit a judge’s discretion and are typically dictated, for example, by the quantity of drugs involved in a crime. The memo concedes there will be cases in which “good judgment” will warrant a prosecutor to veer from that rule. But any exceptions will need to be approved by top supervisors, and the reasons must be documented, allowing the Justice Department to track the handling of such cases by its 94 U.S. attorney’s offices.Mandatory minimums are a problem. Sessions, as a former lawmaker, bears some of the responsibility for that problem, but certainly not all of it. The heuristic that one should usually pursue the "most serious, readily provable" crime isn't even a bad standard: if a serious crime isn't readily provable don't pursue it, but if it is then of course it's your job to nail criminals for their serious crimes.
I would have left a lot more room for that "good judgment" exercise by lower-level officials, rather than requiring high-level officials to sign off on such uses of judgment. Still, it's not an unreasonable policy on its face.
What makes it a problem is, then, the mandatory minimums that exist in the law. That's a problem for legislators, not the Justice Department. I agree with the analysis that such minimums are not appropriate as a general principle. Nevertheless, it's not on the Justice Department to refuse to enforce the law when a crime is "readily provable" just because the law is badly written. It's on Congress to fix the law.
UPDATE:
My congressman, Doug Collins of Georgia's Mighty 9th, is working on trying to reform the laws in the way I'm discussing here. Specifically, he is focused on dealing with the mental health aspects of crimes. Collins is a former Air Force chaplain whose father was a state trooper.
"I've spent a lot of time with our sheriffs and going to our jails. One question I always ask is, 'How many in your jail would you classify as mental health or addiction issues?' The answer is that it ranges from about 35-40 percent of incarcerated individuals in some jails."...Mandatory minimums aren't the right answer to these issues. They might be to some issues -- I think I broadly approve of Project EXILE's moves to punish drug gangs who use guns with harsh penalties, as at least it pulls these kids off the street until they're too old to go around gunning each other down (as well as, being untrained thugs, often innocent people who were proximate to their targets). But there are many cases in which these mandatory minimums should be rethought by Congress.
"We're looking at the whole issue, at folks dealing with serious mental issues, but also from an economic perspective, the money perspective, making the best use of taxpayer dollars to not just incarcerate folks without getting them help," he added.
Who Says Trump Wants a New FBI Director?
Democrats in Congress may be outsmarting themselves.
If you really think there's something to all this, as Democratic leaders claim to do (although even Chairman Grassley concedes that the President is right to say that he isn't personally under investigation), why would you offer this deal? If Trump turns it down, he can charge you with being the ones who are 'obstructing justice' by playing politics with a major police agency. You, by contrast, will be in the difficult position of claiming that (a) 'serious crimes have been committed!' but also that (b) 'Therefore, we must refuse to appoint a new head of the bureau that would investigate such crimes.'
All this chaos is good for somebody, but I'm not sure that somebody is any of us.
So, Democrats are hinting to President Donald Trump, want a new FBI director? Then agree to an independent investigation of your campaign’s possible ties to Russia.Say that one of Trump's goals is making the Russia probe go away. What's more effective in attaining that goal: agreeing to a semi-permanent institution like a special prosecutor, or allowing your opponents to make sure the FBI remains headless?
Democrats control only 48 Senate seats, meaning they need to pull three Republicans over to their side. The bipartisan angst over the abrupt firing of James Comey on Tuesday could give them the leverage they badly need.
They want a special prosecutor, or perhaps a special panel, to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Republican leaders oppose an independent probe, but some GOP senators are sympathetic.
If you really think there's something to all this, as Democratic leaders claim to do (although even Chairman Grassley concedes that the President is right to say that he isn't personally under investigation), why would you offer this deal? If Trump turns it down, he can charge you with being the ones who are 'obstructing justice' by playing politics with a major police agency. You, by contrast, will be in the difficult position of claiming that (a) 'serious crimes have been committed!' but also that (b) 'Therefore, we must refuse to appoint a new head of the bureau that would investigate such crimes.'
All this chaos is good for somebody, but I'm not sure that somebody is any of us.
PR Grandmaster
Scott Adams argues that the average guy's main takeaway from President Trump's letter firing Comey is the odd sentence thanking him for informing him that he was not under investigation. Adams credits Trump with getting his opponents in the media to intone "not under investigation" non-stop for several days, thus laying out one simple and comprehensible concept while thoroughly confusing the public on nearly other aspect of the firing.
Death to Trump(-supporting TV Show)
We don't do TV here at Grim's Hall, so I've never seen the show in question, but it apparently enjoyed high ratings. That's not a reason to avoid canceling it, in today's America; it's the reason to cancel it.
Every week, the half-hour comedy, one of the very few aimed to appeal to America's heartland, won its time-slot in the all-important demo, including 6.4 million overall same-day viewers. Deadline further adds that "[w]hile most returning shows were down year-to-year 20-30%, LMS was virtually flat, off just by 5% in total viewers and adults 18-49[.]"Doesn't matter. What's important is making sure there is absolutely no cultural affirmation for "America's heartland."
Those are very impressive numbers for a show that has been around for six full seasons.
But that is not all!
Last Man Standing was ABC's Friday anchor, meaning a show that could not only be counted on to win the night but one that kept viewers tuned in to whatever shows came after. Anchors are also crucially important when it comes to launching new shows.
But that is not all!
The real money in the sitcom business comes from syndication rights, selling the reruns on a per episode basis to other networks. Last Man Standing is not only a syndication smash, a virtual cash cow, per Deadline it is the "rare off-network ratings success story these days."
When a show does this well in syndication, every episode becomes a bar of gold, a likely source of rolling revenue for years and years to come.
#2 AG Meeting with Senate Intel Committee
Given Sessions' recusal, this guy can approve a special prosecutor on his own -- and no one can stop him if he decides to do so, not the President and not the Senate. I wonder if he's decided to pull the trigger.
Sally Yates is from Georgia?
Apparently she is -- native born, even, and educated at the University of Georgia -- and some are pushing her to be our next governor.
Unconservative
Yuval Levin warns that the voters who won the 2016 election don't see much worth conserving:
I think of alienation as a sense of detachment from one’s own society. It’s looking out at the society you live in and thinking, “That’s not mine” and feeling no connection, no links—seeing it as distant, as hostile, even seeing it as boring. We should never underestimate the power of boredom in social life. That kind of alienation was very much on display in the last election and in some people’s—especially early on in the Republican primaries, in the most devoted Trump supporters—there was a sense that “This society isn’t ours. We have got to blow this up and try again.” I think that’s dangerous in general, but it’s particularly dangerous to conservatism because conservatism in a sense is a sense of attachment and ownership and defensiveness of one’s own society. It certainly can see problems and is inclined to be rather depressed about things most of the time. But that follows from a sense of loss, not from a sense of alienation. It can lead, therefore, in its most constructive forms to a determination to revive, revitalize, recapture institutions, rather than to this sense that “it’s all over” or “the only option we have left is a Hail Mary pass.”
I think that the sort of alienation that was evident in some of Trump’s supporters is very dangerous for the American right because it tends to make the right less conservative. And to make the right hostile to its own society. First of all, I think America doesn’t deserve that. We have a lot of problems, our institutions are in real trouble, but things are not nearly as bad as the way in which Trump described them. Just think about the convention speech and, in some respects, even the inaugural. This describes an America that is much darker than reality and when you do that, it doesn’t leave room for thinking about solutions. It doesn’t leave room for thinking about how to come back.I didn't see the inaugural address that way. Despite my skepticism about Trump, I heard the message that we're tired of being told we're locked into policies that demonstrably don't work, just because someone has decided that the alternatives are unthinkable to the progressive chattering class. I certainly acknowledge a "burn it down, plow it under, salt the ground it stood on" vein in my politics, but not because I'm willing to replace the status quo with just anything. I want either to replace it with policies with a proven track record or, if necessary, to replace it with something new and experimental, but only if we're committed to observing its results and changing it if it doesn't work, either. I'm tired of the magical thinking, from climate science to free lunches.
Ruby Soho
It's a ska take on what I guess is now a punk rock classic, though I am old enough to think of it as a late comer.
Nothing Says "Discrete" Like MOLLE Webbing
It's probably a great product, but I am deeply amused by the marketing.
Set up your discreet mobile field office with the Tactical Shit Snowden Computer Bag that is designed to hold a 17" laptop. The pack unzips to become a portable field desk with multiple pockets for all your gear, documents, pens, power cord, etc. The padded perimeter rim will not only protect your computer, it will also keep the sun off the screen during daylight operations.What's the MOLLE for anyway? Rigging a holster and an ammo pouch to the outside of your computer bag?
German Police Do Not Appreciate Car Culture
Stars & Stripes has an article on how much the German police do not look kindly on American servicemembers' muscle cars. Near one military base, the police are establishing a special unit to crack down on American custom cars.
It's a basic clash of civilizations. It's the clash between this:
...and this:
It's a basic clash of civilizations. It's the clash between this:
...and this:
Warpiper
Havok Journal has a piece by one such.
The first time I played a set of highland bagpipes, the feeling was immense and indescribable. The ability to command such a powerful instrument and convey a mood of elation or utter sorrow was incredible. The first time I fired a M2 .50 caliber machinegun, my brain was equally unprepared to wholly understand what my hands were wielding and what they were then capable of.Not everyone likes the bagpipes, but then again not everybody loves Ma Deuce either!
Refugees and Terror
We've seen anecdotal evidence that the vetting refugees receive doesn't stop them from turning terrorist. We've also seen arguments that we shouldn't expect it to given the paucity of information actually available to vet people coming from failed states, war zones, or enemy states like Iran.
Now we have something like a statistic from James Comey, head of the FBI: refugees make up 15% of their active terrorism cases.
What we don't get from Comey is a sense of whether these refugee terrorists are motivated by, say, attachment to a drug cartel or to, say, some religious doctrine. The United States admitted 85,000 refugees in 2016 alone, meaning that the 300 cases Comey cites would remain a tiny fraction of the refugee population. Even if it were 85,000 total rather than 85,000 annually, that's just 0.0035%; in fact, it would be orders of magnitude lower when you consider the whole population.
Still, refugees as a whole are a tiny fraction of the American population, so it remains surprising to see them so prominently figuring in terrorism cases. Those refugees from 2016 represent 0.00024% of the American population, and treating the population as a whole would only move the decimal at most a few places: we're still going to be talking way less than one full percentage point, not 15 percent.
Now we have something like a statistic from James Comey, head of the FBI: refugees make up 15% of their active terrorism cases.
What we don't get from Comey is a sense of whether these refugee terrorists are motivated by, say, attachment to a drug cartel or to, say, some religious doctrine. The United States admitted 85,000 refugees in 2016 alone, meaning that the 300 cases Comey cites would remain a tiny fraction of the refugee population. Even if it were 85,000 total rather than 85,000 annually, that's just 0.0035%; in fact, it would be orders of magnitude lower when you consider the whole population.
Still, refugees as a whole are a tiny fraction of the American population, so it remains surprising to see them so prominently figuring in terrorism cases. Those refugees from 2016 represent 0.00024% of the American population, and treating the population as a whole would only move the decimal at most a few places: we're still going to be talking way less than one full percentage point, not 15 percent.
Beware Skotland
A Norse travel guide has been recovered recently, written on 800 year old sheets of vellum.
THE very rough guide to Scotland offered the would-be traveller the following warning. Be very careful there, it says – the natives are dangerous, the language incomprehensible and the weather is awful....That sounds about right.
The chronicles have been interpreted by Gisli Sigurdsson, a historian at Reykjavik University... Sigurdsson said the sagas were a warning to travellers that they would encounter a general foggy area, dangerous landings, hostile natives and language problems. They wrote that the people would probably attack you immediately.
Suns Out, Guns Out
Georgia's governor, Nathan Deal, signed this year's campus carry bill into law. I'm surprised that he did so, after vetoing it last year, but the effect is to have produced a much more complicated law.
In related news, the NRA is trying to recruit a more diverse membership.
In related news, the NRA is trying to recruit a more diverse membership.
John Lewis on AHCA
Rep. John Lewis of the Great State of Georgia is not a fan, not at all.
It is possible to untangle opposition to this model of the proper role of the Federal government from opposition to the poor living good lives, or opposing respect for the poor and the sick in general. But there isn't any political advantage to making that leap; in fact it derails several very useful rhetorical tools. And it's emotionally attractive, too, to view your opponents as wicked and evil rather than as simply having different views.
Can we have a debate about the various ways in which Federal money chasing health care services actually raises the cost for everyone, just as increased demand always raises costs given a steady supply? Theoretically, sure. But practically, once you've equated morality with using government to provide goods, opponents to the provision of goods are immoral. Of course it's proper to treat the immoral with disdain. Isn't it?
Today we are facing a crossroads in the history of this nation. One day our children and our children’s children may turn to us and ask, 'Which side were you on?' In the aftermath of this vote, members of the House will have to look their constituents, their friends, their family and even their children in the eyes and tell them the painful truth.This is a good example of the problem I was discussing below, where politics is more aggressive than ethics at dividing people. Lewis, whose skull was broken at Selma, is a man devoted to a particular politics in which the proper role of the Federal government is to do good things for people -- especially poor people and, as a remedy for historical unfairness, minority groups. He reads this bill as an attack on the poor and the sick.
The House Republican bill, H.R. 1628, does not rescue health care. It is an attack on the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled. It punishes hard-working women and men, and it uses their resources collected in the federal Treasury as a pipeline to line the pockets of big business and the wealthiest people in the world.
Never ever in my years in the U.S. House of Representatives have I seen such a betrayal of the public trust. Never have I seen legislative action that reveals such clear disdain for the human dignity of the most vulnerable among us. Never have I ever seen such a willingness to disregard what is right in favor of what is so wrong.
People from all around the country begged their elected representatives to vote against this despicable bill. Instead, my colleagues chose to serve themselves and their rich friends and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves. H.R. 1628 proves this White House ushered in a government of the rich, by the rich, for big business, and people will pay with their lives for it.
If this bill becomes law, at least 24 million Americans who can see their doctors today will be turned away tomorrow. Those who are sick will suffer, and some of them will die. People with pre-existing conditions will have premiums so high most will not be able to afford care, and any state can deny healthcare to their citizens at any time.
This is a shame and a disgrace. May God have mercy on us all.
It is possible to untangle opposition to this model of the proper role of the Federal government from opposition to the poor living good lives, or opposing respect for the poor and the sick in general. But there isn't any political advantage to making that leap; in fact it derails several very useful rhetorical tools. And it's emotionally attractive, too, to view your opponents as wicked and evil rather than as simply having different views.
Can we have a debate about the various ways in which Federal money chasing health care services actually raises the cost for everyone, just as increased demand always raises costs given a steady supply? Theoretically, sure. But practically, once you've equated morality with using government to provide goods, opponents to the provision of goods are immoral. Of course it's proper to treat the immoral with disdain. Isn't it?
AHCA Take II
I've spent part of the evening reading through the bill. It is not, in fact, either a repeal or a replacement of the ACA; its relative brevity depends on the fact that it is mostly a modification of that law. A true repeal could have been much briefer; a true replacement would have had to have been much longer.
There are some good things about it, although some of them are trivial. It is clear that the Congress has been listening to the states and taking advice on what works and what doesn't, which is good. Some of that advice has been silly, like the insistence on a provision allowing states to strip Medicaid from high-dollar lottery winners. That's one of those problems that may look bad in the papers, but it can't possibly come up often enough to really merit anyone's attention. Still, trivialities aside, clearly Congress consulted with the states about the problems they'd faced implementing the ACA, and incorporated those thoughts into the bill.
Bad things appear to be included as well, although it's hard to say how bad they really are. I'm seeing equally confident exclamations from left-leaning sites that the AHCA's costs cannot be known, because the CBO hasn't scored it and nor has anyone else reputable; and also that the cost of various "pre-existing conditions" will go up by this-or-that very precise figure. Probably the first of these is true, and the figures are all made-up.
That in turn suggests that the Republicans did not learn the most crucial lesson of the ACA, which is that you should never pass a major piece of legislation whose effects you haven't taken the time to fully understand. Bad consequences are almost certain, and any consequences -- or even accidents that can be painted as consequences -- will now belong to the Republicans, or anyway will if they manage to get this through the Senate and signed by President Trump.
On the first pass, I'm not really sure what to think about it. On the one hand, Obamacare has been terrible for rural America. Breaking the seal on making changes to it would be worth doing, even if the changes aren't great. Henceforth Democrats won't oppose any changes because they're trying to 'preserve the Obama legacy'; they can support changes in terms of 'replacing/repairing Trumpcare.' Thus, we would be freer as a nation to think and adjust to the bad aspects of this bill as well as the Obamacare legacy bill.
On the other hand, a lot of this looks like it's unlikely to reduce anybody's health care costs -- though it will cut taxes for some, and raise costs for others (especially the sick and the poor). I think the Feds should get out of the health care game more or less entirely, even turning the VA into quiet grants to veterans to let them pursue private medical services. This is not a step in that direction. It's also not a step in the direction of single-payer, though, and there's a chance it will at least open the game back up to easier future adjustments as necessary.
So I'm not sure what I think right now. What do you think?
There are some good things about it, although some of them are trivial. It is clear that the Congress has been listening to the states and taking advice on what works and what doesn't, which is good. Some of that advice has been silly, like the insistence on a provision allowing states to strip Medicaid from high-dollar lottery winners. That's one of those problems that may look bad in the papers, but it can't possibly come up often enough to really merit anyone's attention. Still, trivialities aside, clearly Congress consulted with the states about the problems they'd faced implementing the ACA, and incorporated those thoughts into the bill.
Bad things appear to be included as well, although it's hard to say how bad they really are. I'm seeing equally confident exclamations from left-leaning sites that the AHCA's costs cannot be known, because the CBO hasn't scored it and nor has anyone else reputable; and also that the cost of various "pre-existing conditions" will go up by this-or-that very precise figure. Probably the first of these is true, and the figures are all made-up.
That in turn suggests that the Republicans did not learn the most crucial lesson of the ACA, which is that you should never pass a major piece of legislation whose effects you haven't taken the time to fully understand. Bad consequences are almost certain, and any consequences -- or even accidents that can be painted as consequences -- will now belong to the Republicans, or anyway will if they manage to get this through the Senate and signed by President Trump.
On the first pass, I'm not really sure what to think about it. On the one hand, Obamacare has been terrible for rural America. Breaking the seal on making changes to it would be worth doing, even if the changes aren't great. Henceforth Democrats won't oppose any changes because they're trying to 'preserve the Obama legacy'; they can support changes in terms of 'replacing/repairing Trumpcare.' Thus, we would be freer as a nation to think and adjust to the bad aspects of this bill as well as the Obamacare legacy bill.
On the other hand, a lot of this looks like it's unlikely to reduce anybody's health care costs -- though it will cut taxes for some, and raise costs for others (especially the sick and the poor). I think the Feds should get out of the health care game more or less entirely, even turning the VA into quiet grants to veterans to let them pursue private medical services. This is not a step in that direction. It's also not a step in the direction of single-payer, though, and there's a chance it will at least open the game back up to easier future adjustments as necessary.
So I'm not sure what I think right now. What do you think?
Orkney!
In a collection of 12 maps of Scotland, the map of place names in the Orkney Islands is my favorite.
The One Ring
The feminist philosophers I know are of the rising generation, and they are very decent people whom I've not seen engage in poisonous rhetoric of any sort. Watching the destruction of the career of Prof. Rebecca Tuvel, however, I can't doubt that there is a problem of some sort at work in the field.
I wonder if it isn't a more general problem of American political philosophy, though. Typically, it is very human to respect those who live moral lives according to your sense of what "moral" means, and to respect people less if they don't. It's ordinary even to despise people who live lives that are immoral by one's own lights. The problem in political philosophy is that despising your opponents destroys the process of reasoning together. Yet we -- and not just feminists at all, but Americans in general, Democrats and Republicans and others as well -- seem to be locked into a cycle of despising as immoral those with whom we disagree politically.
Oddly enough there isn't a similar problem in ethics, at least not usually. There are several basic roads to ethics that are all thought acceptable even though they diverge. I tend to believe in virtue ethics, for example, and find utilitarianism to be fairly implausible. But I don't despise utilitarians. Nor do they despise virtue ethics, nor does either group despise deontologists. So it's possible to disagree on even the most basic questions of morality without falling into mutual disdain.
Probably it's just the question of power. In ethics, I decide for myself what is right and do that, and mostly that affects me and a few others who have chosen to associate with me (and are free to choose otherwise). In politics, decisions on moral questions are inevitably impositions. It's no longer a question of respecting a difference; it becomes a question of resenting being forced to accept things that you yourself find immoral.
I suspect that any attempt to redress this problem would also give rise to a complaint (again, from all sides) that it is ridiculous to ask them to respect people who want to impose immoral agendas upon them. Which means that their opponents must be driven from politics, somehow, since imposition is inevitable.
For 13 years now, I've been trying to convince people that the right way to resolve this is by finding a way for Americans of different moral views not to exert power over each other. Mostly I have argued for restoring the 10th Amendment and devolving powers from the Federal branches to the states. Then the power concerns fade, as there will be 50 different ways of living available to all.
Sometimes people can be convinced while they are out of power, but I have yet to observe many who remained true to the path should they gain power. It's a quandary: one must have power, and substantial power, to make a change like this. Having gained the power, though, why would you want to break up its very source?
I wonder if it isn't a more general problem of American political philosophy, though. Typically, it is very human to respect those who live moral lives according to your sense of what "moral" means, and to respect people less if they don't. It's ordinary even to despise people who live lives that are immoral by one's own lights. The problem in political philosophy is that despising your opponents destroys the process of reasoning together. Yet we -- and not just feminists at all, but Americans in general, Democrats and Republicans and others as well -- seem to be locked into a cycle of despising as immoral those with whom we disagree politically.
Oddly enough there isn't a similar problem in ethics, at least not usually. There are several basic roads to ethics that are all thought acceptable even though they diverge. I tend to believe in virtue ethics, for example, and find utilitarianism to be fairly implausible. But I don't despise utilitarians. Nor do they despise virtue ethics, nor does either group despise deontologists. So it's possible to disagree on even the most basic questions of morality without falling into mutual disdain.
Probably it's just the question of power. In ethics, I decide for myself what is right and do that, and mostly that affects me and a few others who have chosen to associate with me (and are free to choose otherwise). In politics, decisions on moral questions are inevitably impositions. It's no longer a question of respecting a difference; it becomes a question of resenting being forced to accept things that you yourself find immoral.
I suspect that any attempt to redress this problem would also give rise to a complaint (again, from all sides) that it is ridiculous to ask them to respect people who want to impose immoral agendas upon them. Which means that their opponents must be driven from politics, somehow, since imposition is inevitable.
For 13 years now, I've been trying to convince people that the right way to resolve this is by finding a way for Americans of different moral views not to exert power over each other. Mostly I have argued for restoring the 10th Amendment and devolving powers from the Federal branches to the states. Then the power concerns fade, as there will be 50 different ways of living available to all.
Sometimes people can be convinced while they are out of power, but I have yet to observe many who remained true to the path should they gain power. It's a quandary: one must have power, and substantial power, to make a change like this. Having gained the power, though, why would you want to break up its very source?
Transiting Sex and Race
If someone can be 'transgender' or 'transsexual,' why not 'transracial'? A young feminist scholar made the mistake of asking. It's likely to destroy her career.
The thing is, as everyone knows, sex is a huge biological fact that impacts everything about us. Race is, at most, a heuristic way of talking about genetic differences in groups; more likely, it's a fiction largely created to sell early Modern Europeans on being OK with re-introducing slavery. It has a big social reality, but refers to nothing that is biologically real. Thus, if one can 'trans'it sex, one could surely 'trans'it race. To say otherwise is to hold that this social fiction has more impact on us than what is probably the single most important biological characteristic.
I suppose one could argue that this is in fact the case: that race, even without a real biological referent, is socially so important that it does indeed trump sex. Charles Mills, cited in the hated article, might make that argument; his latest book points in that direction. (I should note that I have met Charles Mills and heard him speak, and whatever you think of his subject matter, he is a consummate gentleman and unfailingly courteous.) I doubt that argument would pan out, but one could make it.
No one is bothering to try. The intent is simply to put this woman's head on a spike, as a warning to others. It has already worked with the board of the journal that, after double blind peer review, published her work. They are cowards, of course, but that is only to be expected of them. Only cowards survive in their field.
As said by Sir William Francis Butler: "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." Well, there you go.
I hope that Prof. Tuvel consults a lawyer about this defamation; and while it looks to me like defamation per se (i.e., damages are presumed since the critics are impugning her competence in her profession), I would imagine showing damage would not be hard. How can Prof. Tuvel, for example, now use this repudiated but allegedly peer-reviewed article as part of her tenure process? Indeed, how can her department or college support her for tenure when she has been so vilified as a scholar and professional by people who work in her fields? I wonder did any of those professing solidarity with those who specialize in taking offense consider the very tangible harm they are doing to the author of this article?...More here.
We have been living with an "atmosphere of reckless attack" in philosophy (as one correspondent put it to me in 2014) for awhile now. I hope this proves to be the final straw, and that the community will finally stand up and denounce this misconduct that should be anathema to a scholarly community. If Prof. Tuvel does decide to seek legal redress for what has happened to her, I will organize fundraising on her behalf. It really is time to stop this madness.
The thing is, as everyone knows, sex is a huge biological fact that impacts everything about us. Race is, at most, a heuristic way of talking about genetic differences in groups; more likely, it's a fiction largely created to sell early Modern Europeans on being OK with re-introducing slavery. It has a big social reality, but refers to nothing that is biologically real. Thus, if one can 'trans'it sex, one could surely 'trans'it race. To say otherwise is to hold that this social fiction has more impact on us than what is probably the single most important biological characteristic.
I suppose one could argue that this is in fact the case: that race, even without a real biological referent, is socially so important that it does indeed trump sex. Charles Mills, cited in the hated article, might make that argument; his latest book points in that direction. (I should note that I have met Charles Mills and heard him speak, and whatever you think of his subject matter, he is a consummate gentleman and unfailingly courteous.) I doubt that argument would pan out, but one could make it.
No one is bothering to try. The intent is simply to put this woman's head on a spike, as a warning to others. It has already worked with the board of the journal that, after double blind peer review, published her work. They are cowards, of course, but that is only to be expected of them. Only cowards survive in their field.
As said by Sir William Francis Butler: "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." Well, there you go.
Corruption and Esteem
A scathing criticism of American liberalism, which ends by asserting that the corruption is completely understandable. Well, perhaps it is; but it is corruption, is it not?
Rights and Wrongs
I've heard this proposal before, but I think it was coming from a sophomore. In High School.
A polity exists in part in order that its members might defend each other from just such violations, whether by criminals or by Vandals. It is the mark of a very strange set of priorities to suggest that citizens ought to prefer protecting the rights of the Vandals to protecting each other. The reason to protect rights even for Vandals, after all, is that such protections serve as a further fortification of the rights of the citizenry. To throw aside the citizens' rights in favor of the Vandals' is to miss the whole point of why Vandals' rights are protected at all.
The main problem with the notion of self-defense is it imposes on justice, for everyone has the right for a fair trial. Therefore, using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal because if the attacker is killed, he or she is devoid of his or her rights.Everyone has a right to walk down the public street without being robbed or killed, too. Any citizen has the right, and something of the duty, to try to stop such a violation when he or she encounters it in progress. Whether this is a case of "self-defense" or defense of a fellow citizen is immaterial.
A polity exists in part in order that its members might defend each other from just such violations, whether by criminals or by Vandals. It is the mark of a very strange set of priorities to suggest that citizens ought to prefer protecting the rights of the Vandals to protecting each other. The reason to protect rights even for Vandals, after all, is that such protections serve as a further fortification of the rights of the citizenry. To throw aside the citizens' rights in favor of the Vandals' is to miss the whole point of why Vandals' rights are protected at all.
'Oss 'oss, wee 'oss!
The Padstow Day Song ("Unite and unite, oh, let us unite, for summer is a-coming today") and Night Song ("Oh, where is King George? Where is he oh?") are the traditional May Day songs for Padstow in Cornwall. The Hobby Horse (the "Old 'Oss") is a giant cylindrical black creature that tries to capture young women under its skirts, meaning they'll be married within the year.
This is my favorite rendition of the songs. 'Oss 'oss, wee 'oss! 'Oss 'oss, wee 'oss! 'Oss 'oss, WEE 'OSS!
This is my favorite rendition of the songs. 'Oss 'oss, wee 'oss! 'Oss 'oss, wee 'oss! 'Oss 'oss, WEE 'OSS!
The Merry Month of May
The joy associated with May in the old tales may be associated with the more northern climes in which these songs were written; here, it was April in which everything broke into riotous flowers. Now, summer is here if you judge by the trees instead of the stars.
Still, May and October often have the best weather of the year even here.
The change of season provokes thoughts about the importance of using time well.
Here is a song about the first of May from a medieval troubadour and, later, knight.
I hope the day finds you well.
Still, May and October often have the best weather of the year even here.
The change of season provokes thoughts about the importance of using time well.
Here is a song about the first of May from a medieval troubadour and, later, knight.
I hope the day finds you well.
On Station
Well, this week wasn't as much fun as I had hoped, but it was eventful. I have learned, for example, that in addition to the two things that I knew could cause power steering to fail -- burst hydraulic lines, and a failure of the pump/reservoir -- a third thing that can happen is for a solid steel bracket to fail for no apparent reason and drop your alternator on the whole assembly.
Since the bracket may be attached to a major component of your engine, such as the timing chain cover, the cost of labor could make repairs prohibitively expensive. You would, after all, have to take apart a large part of the engine to install a replacement -- if you had a replacement.
Because the failure was due to a design flaw (you engineers should know better than to use a thin single point of cast rather than forged steel to hold an alternator, which is under tension from the belt driving it), you'd think there would be a recall. However, as Fight Club explains, AxBxC=X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, the company won't do one.
Just because the cost of a recall can involve repairs that are each individually prohibitively expensive, often times they aren't done. But the part you'd need to repair the vehicle, were you inclined to pay the prohibitive cost, will be discontinued. Thus, not only is it prohibitively expensive, it's nearly impossible.
So anyway, I bought a used truck this weekend. It's a Ford. The old one wasn't. That's all I'm going to say about it, but you can take that for what it's worth.
Since the bracket may be attached to a major component of your engine, such as the timing chain cover, the cost of labor could make repairs prohibitively expensive. You would, after all, have to take apart a large part of the engine to install a replacement -- if you had a replacement.
Because the failure was due to a design flaw (you engineers should know better than to use a thin single point of cast rather than forged steel to hold an alternator, which is under tension from the belt driving it), you'd think there would be a recall. However, as Fight Club explains, AxBxC=X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, the company won't do one.
Just because the cost of a recall can involve repairs that are each individually prohibitively expensive, often times they aren't done. But the part you'd need to repair the vehicle, were you inclined to pay the prohibitive cost, will be discontinued. Thus, not only is it prohibitively expensive, it's nearly impossible.
So anyway, I bought a used truck this weekend. It's a Ford. The old one wasn't. That's all I'm going to say about it, but you can take that for what it's worth.
Bliss
I have no words to describe how wonderful was the Sacred Harp two-singing I attended this weekend. These videos aren't from that event, though they are from the same location four years ago, and both feature songs we did. This is very much the same sound:
There were 80 people present on both days, including at least 40 or 50 active singers. Even better, the active singers included a hard core of old-timers expert in their singing. Almost best, a dozen very young children got up to lead. Some were so young they couldn't quite remember that they were supposed to call the song by its number. Some stood up with an adult to support, but others got right out there on their own. I've been attending these singings for nearly 30 years; I see no sign at all of their decaying.
At certain points in the program people stand to announce singings in other locations, not only here in Texas but all over the country. (There were singers present from a dozen or more states this weekend.) One old fellow announced his Alabama church's upcoming annual singing as its 179th or some such wild number, then explained that the number for "consecutive" annual singings was a little less than that; there was a period of a couple of years when they weren't able to have one, during the 1860s.
There were 80 people present on both days, including at least 40 or 50 active singers. Even better, the active singers included a hard core of old-timers expert in their singing. Almost best, a dozen very young children got up to lead. Some were so young they couldn't quite remember that they were supposed to call the song by its number. Some stood up with an adult to support, but others got right out there on their own. I've been attending these singings for nearly 30 years; I see no sign at all of their decaying.
At certain points in the program people stand to announce singings in other locations, not only here in Texas but all over the country. (There were singers present from a dozen or more states this weekend.) One old fellow announced his Alabama church's upcoming annual singing as its 179th or some such wild number, then explained that the number for "consecutive" annual singings was a little less than that; there was a period of a couple of years when they weren't able to have one, during the 1860s.
Schlichter: I Am a Victim of Your Hateful Hate Crimes, You Hate Criminals
I've often thought that the right needs to turn the left's rhetoric against lefties, and Schlichter takes a good swing at it. He begins:
Now, some may consider this a form of sarcastic reductio ad absurdum. I, however, see it as a new paradigm of discourse when talking to those on the left who have already reduced themselves to absurdity. When in Absurdistan, do as the Absurdis do, right?
As a person of absolutely no color who embodies an intersectional reality that includes my utter lack of genderfluidity and my unemployment-questioning, differently-veteraned, and non-pagan experiences, I am totally oppressed by progressivism’s hegemonic power structure. I am also the victim of a systemic system of hostile paradigms that denies my truth regarding my phallo-possessory identity.
Now, some may consider this a form of sarcastic reductio ad absurdum. I, however, see it as a new paradigm of discourse when talking to those on the left who have already reduced themselves to absurdity. When in Absurdistan, do as the Absurdis do, right?
Make El Chapo Pay for the Wall
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) introduced the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act on Tuesday, intending to cover the cost of the southern border wall by seizing more than $14 billion in drug proceeds from infamous Mexican drug lord JoaquÃn "El Chapo" Guzmán.
Being Helpful
Sonny Bunch at the Free Beacon has some suggestions to help the Democratic Party connect with "most people":
Spot on, man! And he has more.
Wow. If they follow his advice, the Democrats may be on the road to dominating the federal government for a generation.
The real problem isn't that Democrats are out of touch with common folks; it's that common folks don't understand that the struggles of the out-of-work coal miner are intricately linked to the struggles of the bisexual transgendered pronounless twitter user who feels oppressed by the mainstream's refusal to admit that zir exists and that zir's problems are not trivialities. A nationwide ad campaign explaining the intricacies of intersectionality will bring Democrats one step closer to showing that progressives really do have the problems of you, the people, in their hearts.
Spot on, man! And he has more.
Wow. If they follow his advice, the Democrats may be on the road to dominating the federal government for a generation.
Talk about things you like to hear
"Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble talk . . . ." Politico joins the ranks of professional media types grasping for an explanation of how they could have blown the last election so badly. Clearly it's not deliberate bias, that would be wrong, but plausibly it's that the bubble they all live in has grown more extreme over the last decade as local newspapers disappeared and were replaced by e-journalism. It's not our fault! We might have guessed that the rise of internet news would have a dispersive effect, but in fact it's only concentrated the higher-paying journalism jobs in the usual coastal and urban bubbles. So, yes, we talk only to those in our highly-paid, progressive bubbles, but that's only natural.
Politico's proposed treatment for this malaise is not particularly compelling.
I've been reading "Shattered," about the disastrous Clinton campaign. The authors may be unsparing in their description of the awful candidate--the only character who's getting kid-glove treatment so far is Bernie Sanders--but they're still 100% in for their poor lost Hillary. It's pretty amazing, really, how much time they can spend wringing their hands over how difficult it was for the poor woman to identify and communicate her message. She could not seem to articulate why she was running for president. She kept berating her campaign staff for failing to accomplish this task on her behalf. As if it were not obvious that would-be President "It's My Turn" wanted the office because it's only fair, dang it, not to mention pretty convenient and lucrative and flattering.
Sanders appears in the narrative as an admirably honest fellow; it's only unfortunate that "most Americans" don't cotton to socialism. If the authors make a connection between the lovely, caring policies Sanders would try to implement and the horror that is now overtaking Venezuela, I can't detect it. They simply are drawn to Sanders because they can't quite escape the conviction that Clinton is a stone-cold liar without a trace of self-knowledge, with no identifiable political convictions other than that governing is a tough exercise in smart policy of some kind or another that, to our collective sorrow, cannot easily be communicated to a lot of mouth-breathing voters. Meanwhile, Trump effortlessly channels the ugly Zeitgeist. Woe to the republic.
This aside in the Politico article made me laugh, too:
At church this week, a co-parishioner announced a new chat group that would attempt to bridge the unidentified political divide (guess which side she's on) and foster more respectful communication. I told her I'd almost stopped trying to talk to family and college friends on the other (still unidentified) side of the political landscape, not because I couldn't restrain myself from insulting them, but because I was tired of listening quietly while they loudly and persistently insulted me. It wasn't that the conversation foundered when I adopted her advice of listening respectfully. All I do now is listen and try to stem the worst of the oblivious attack-speech by gently suggesting that there are other points of view, and that my interlocutor might want to consider that she might be in the presence of someone who holds them. That, combined with my pruning of my Facebook feed, has meant I spend no time explaining myself to these people, and less and less time listening to them, either. Increasingly, I get my limited information about their views from more impersonal outlets. As far as I can tell, they get no information about my views from any source, unless you count their assumption that a second-hand description of what Limbaugh said this week accurately sums up my own views.
Why would I attend her gatherings? Will she have taught any of her fellow travelers to listen to someone like me without drifting into insult? Will she even learn the knack herself? Her anecdotes of success included the breathless report that she mentioned to a friend how much she disliked Rush Limbaugh, only to learn that her friend unexpectedly was not that crazy about him herself. A blow for communication and solidarity! They went on to learn that her friend wasn't actually that crazy about Bill O'Reilly, either. See, they really are people! You don't have to be afraid to talk to them! They may turn out to share your views on some public personalities, and then you won't even have to hear what they think on any of the scary issues.
But then the national votes come in and remain perennially astonishing. "We may never know what motivates these people . . . ."
Politico's proposed treatment for this malaise is not particularly compelling.
The best medicine for journalistic myopia isn’t reeducation camps or a splurge of diversity hiring, though tiny doses of those two remedies wouldn’t hurt. Journalists respond to their failings best when their vanity is punctured with proof that they blew a story that was right in front of them. If the burning humiliation of missing the biggest political story in a generation won’t change newsrooms, nothing will. More than anything, journalists hate getting beat.Do they really? More than they hate preening and congratulating themselves and their colleagues? More than they hate moping about how the profit motive contaminates discourse, just as they'd always suspected? (Here, the author throws in a little salve to Politico's vanity by noting that Breitbart's news site does a surprisingly robust click-business, though of course nothing to equal Politico's own. If you want to talk about being the popular kids.)
I've been reading "Shattered," about the disastrous Clinton campaign. The authors may be unsparing in their description of the awful candidate--the only character who's getting kid-glove treatment so far is Bernie Sanders--but they're still 100% in for their poor lost Hillary. It's pretty amazing, really, how much time they can spend wringing their hands over how difficult it was for the poor woman to identify and communicate her message. She could not seem to articulate why she was running for president. She kept berating her campaign staff for failing to accomplish this task on her behalf. As if it were not obvious that would-be President "It's My Turn" wanted the office because it's only fair, dang it, not to mention pretty convenient and lucrative and flattering.
Sanders appears in the narrative as an admirably honest fellow; it's only unfortunate that "most Americans" don't cotton to socialism. If the authors make a connection between the lovely, caring policies Sanders would try to implement and the horror that is now overtaking Venezuela, I can't detect it. They simply are drawn to Sanders because they can't quite escape the conviction that Clinton is a stone-cold liar without a trace of self-knowledge, with no identifiable political convictions other than that governing is a tough exercise in smart policy of some kind or another that, to our collective sorrow, cannot easily be communicated to a lot of mouth-breathing voters. Meanwhile, Trump effortlessly channels the ugly Zeitgeist. Woe to the republic.
This aside in the Politico article made me laugh, too:
Unlike other industries, the national media has a directive beyond just staying in business: Many newsrooms really do feel a commitment to reflecting America fairly.They . . . ? Well, unless "fairly" means looking in the mirror. What's so hard about learning something of the viewpoints outside one's own bubble? Is the job of a journalist really limited to cocktail party chat, or do they occasionally find time to read a book or frequent a website with opposing views? Even if they don't have the leisure or the budget for a safari through wildest I-30 corridor-land, we have tools in the modern world for communicating with distant strangers, available to anyone with a bit of curiosity and a gift for tamping down the smugness for a few hours.
At church this week, a co-parishioner announced a new chat group that would attempt to bridge the unidentified political divide (guess which side she's on) and foster more respectful communication. I told her I'd almost stopped trying to talk to family and college friends on the other (still unidentified) side of the political landscape, not because I couldn't restrain myself from insulting them, but because I was tired of listening quietly while they loudly and persistently insulted me. It wasn't that the conversation foundered when I adopted her advice of listening respectfully. All I do now is listen and try to stem the worst of the oblivious attack-speech by gently suggesting that there are other points of view, and that my interlocutor might want to consider that she might be in the presence of someone who holds them. That, combined with my pruning of my Facebook feed, has meant I spend no time explaining myself to these people, and less and less time listening to them, either. Increasingly, I get my limited information about their views from more impersonal outlets. As far as I can tell, they get no information about my views from any source, unless you count their assumption that a second-hand description of what Limbaugh said this week accurately sums up my own views.
Why would I attend her gatherings? Will she have taught any of her fellow travelers to listen to someone like me without drifting into insult? Will she even learn the knack herself? Her anecdotes of success included the breathless report that she mentioned to a friend how much she disliked Rush Limbaugh, only to learn that her friend unexpectedly was not that crazy about him herself. A blow for communication and solidarity! They went on to learn that her friend wasn't actually that crazy about Bill O'Reilly, either. See, they really are people! You don't have to be afraid to talk to them! They may turn out to share your views on some public personalities, and then you won't even have to hear what they think on any of the scary issues.
But then the national votes come in and remain perennially astonishing. "We may never know what motivates these people . . . ."
Detective stories
It turns out Audible.com has quite a few free books on offer. At first I stuck to classics, some Jane Austen and so forth, because I'm suspicious of modern fiction recommended by sites like Audible or Kindle. In desperation during a long painting job, though, I took a chance on an author named Colin Cotteril, who turns out to be terrific. Imagine John Le Carre on antidepressants and channeling Roger Zelazny.
So far I've listened to the first two in a series about a Laotian coroner, The Coroner's Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth. Unlike many coroner-based procedurals, this one doesn't try to gross the reader out. The protagonist, a disillusioned 72-year-old doctor who finds himself the reluctant national coroner without training or facilities in post-revolution socialist Laos in 1978, is cynical but not in the least hard-hearted, more of a Jane Marple than a Sam Spade. Actually a bit of Obi-Wan Kenobe. The Audible version is especially enjoyable for the accents, which are all Brit.
So far I've listened to the first two in a series about a Laotian coroner, The Coroner's Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth. Unlike many coroner-based procedurals, this one doesn't try to gross the reader out. The protagonist, a disillusioned 72-year-old doctor who finds himself the reluctant national coroner without training or facilities in post-revolution socialist Laos in 1978, is cynical but not in the least hard-hearted, more of a Jane Marple than a Sam Spade. Actually a bit of Obi-Wan Kenobe. The Audible version is especially enjoyable for the accents, which are all Brit.
Life Advice from Old Cowboy Movies
There's three times in a man's life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and... and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start.Today I finished something I was probably crazy to start, which I've been working on for seven years. I'm going to be offline for a bit; perhaps a week. I don't know that I'll yell at the moon, but I'll definitely celebrate with some time doing something else.
-Red River
Enjoy yourselves. I'll be back.
Cybersecurity, the Old-Fashioned Way
Vice points out that our nuclear missiles are almost completely secure from cyber attack.
The technology that currently powers these nukes is notoriously antiquated. Most of the systems were designed and built during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and ’70s, with the last major overhaul completed during the Reagan administration. Some computers in the missile base command centers still use eight-inch floppy disks....That strikes me as a good point.
U.S. nuclear missile base technology is ancient by modern standards, but the old machines offer almost maximum cybersecurity simply by virtue of their age. With everything hardwired and analog, the system is uniquely impervious to intrusion and meddling. That leaves some nuclear experts to ask: Why spend billions switching from a system that is relatively safe to one that’s potentially more vulnerable?
Good Order & Discipline
The Department of the Navy has settled upon a regulatory change to address the Marines United photo-sharing scandal.
It's a half-step, but my guess is that there is no one in the leadership who feels empowered to question the place of Free Love in the military at this particular moment in American history. As with other 1960s counterculture values, Free Love is now ascendant for good and for ill.
Even in the Marine Corps.
The statute details three conditions that will be considered a violation of Navy regulations, including if images are broadcast or transmitted: “with the intent to realize personal gain; with the intent to humiliate, harm, harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce the depicted person; or with reckless disregard as to whether the depicted person would be humiliated, harmed, intimidated, threatened, or coerced,” the regs read...As expected, 100% of the focus is on the unauthorized sharing of the photos. There will not be any attempt to rein in the fraternizing of male and female Marines, nor their sharing of nude photos of each other so long as it is consensual. Neither will there be any inquiry into whether such an environment is really compatible with good order and discipline.
In this case, detailing expectations of Department of the Navy personnel amounts to a lawful order, which can be enforced with the full weight of the justice system, from non-judicial punishment to general court martial. Sailors and Marines who run afoul of the new regs could be charged with an Article 92, failure to obey a lawful order, the Navy's chief spokesperson confirmed in a statement.
It's a half-step, but my guess is that there is no one in the leadership who feels empowered to question the place of Free Love in the military at this particular moment in American history. As with other 1960s counterculture values, Free Love is now ascendant for good and for ill.
Even in the Marine Corps.
Awakening
A Vox writer comes to the dawning realization that the US government isn't capable of handling the legalization of drugs. It's a pretty good piece -- I don't raise it to mock it, but to praise the willingness to rethink a long-held position based on evidence you would likely prefer to ignore.
The basic idea is that he has come to realize that, while legalization might work elsewhere, America's particular government is incapable of regulating drugs effectively. Legalization will thus predictably bring a vast increase in drug use and the trauma associated with it. It is not that it is impossible to legalize drugs and regulate them wisely; other countries may be able to do it. Our system, however, is incapable of it.
I sometimes use a similar argument against single-payer in America. It may be that other governments can do that well, but if we had single-payer, you already know what it would look like. It would look like the VA.
The basic idea is that he has come to realize that, while legalization might work elsewhere, America's particular government is incapable of regulating drugs effectively. Legalization will thus predictably bring a vast increase in drug use and the trauma associated with it. It is not that it is impossible to legalize drugs and regulate them wisely; other countries may be able to do it. Our system, however, is incapable of it.
I sometimes use a similar argument against single-payer in America. It may be that other governments can do that well, but if we had single-payer, you already know what it would look like. It would look like the VA.
Two Very Different Takes on the Same Information
The American Spectator has been developing a report from the UK's Guardian. The information in the stories is substantially the same, but the impression you get about what the story actually is will differ wildly depending on which publication you read. The Guardian report is another "Trump (or at least some people with his campaign) colluded with Russia" story. The Spectator story is not.
...John Brennan was the American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump. One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election — Hillary’s.Is it possible that both papers are correct in their take? The claim that Brennan was a "supporter" of CPUSA does at least track to his admission that he voted for the CPUSA candidate in 1976. He was also the CIA director when the Agency hacked the US Senate, which should have been a red line for anyone who respected democratic limits on the powers of spying.
Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.
John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump. An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with “Hillary for president cups” and other campaign paraphernalia.
A supporter of the American Communist Party at the height of the Cold War, Brennan brought into the CIA a raft of subversives and gave them plum positions from which to gather and leak political espionage on Trump. He bastardized standards so that these left-wing activists could burrow in and take career positions.
Up or Down?
From a mostly-correct piece on the dangers of politics as comedy:
The late-night political-comedy shows... staked their territory during the heat of the general election: unwavering, bombastic, belittling, humiliating screeds against Donald Trump. Fair enough. Trump is a man who on any casual summer day during the campaign could be found inciting a crowd to violence. This isn’t the slippery slope; this is the ditch at the bottom of the hill. Once a man stands before a mob and exhorts the powerful to beat the outlier, it’s all over except for the cannibalism and the cave painting. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” said Abraham Lincoln. “Knock the crap out of them,” said Donald Trump.Which way is down slope? Lincoln's remarks were made on a battlefield very recently interred with ten thousand men.
WeaponsMan, aka Kevin O'Brien, RIP
I don't know about you all, but I often lurked over at WeaponsMan blog, not really knowing enough to say anything of interest, but learning a great deal. Today, sad news that after suffering a massive and sudden heart attack, and after a few days deteriorating in the hospital, he has passed away.
He will be missed, but surely, he lived!
He will be missed, but surely, he lived!
Unload and Show Clear
Don't try to catch a cleared cartridge in your hand, that seems to be the lesson of this post.
But as a man of the old fashion, let me just say that this never happens with a revolver.
But as a man of the old fashion, let me just say that this never happens with a revolver.
Five Dollar Bill
I wrote my new song on a five dollar bill
but I won't be able to sing it until
I get hot on the trail for to pick up the track
of the dirty little thief and get my five bucks back ...
Schism and resolution
Among the nuttier reasons to get your state to secede from the U.S. has got to be the hope that you'll have less to fear from terrorists if you are less associated with the guilt of America.
"When I talk to people about California independence, they always say: ‘Well, what would you do if China invades?’” says Yes California president Louis Marinelli from his home in . . . Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk (city motto: Don’t call us Siberia), an industrial center on the edge of the Ural Mountains in Russia. “Seriously,” he asks, “when’s the last time China invaded another country?” I mention the obvious ones: Tibet, India, and the Soviet Union. There’s Vietnam and Korea. Marinelli is a young man; perhaps much of this seems like ancient history to him. It does not to the Indians, or the Russians, or the Vietnamese, or many others. “No, I mean: When’s the last time China crossed an ocean to invade another country?” he clarifies. “Only the United States does that.”
Only?
The American war machine must surely be of some intense concern to California’s would-be Jefferson Davis, inasmuch as there is no legal or constitutional process for a state’s separating from the Union, a question that was settled definitively if not in court then just outside the courthouse at Appomattox.We have been watching a ScyFy TV series called "The Expanse," set in 2020, about (among other things) the pains of nation-building and colonial resentments on Mars and in the Asteroid Belt. Perhaps because I was trying to do crafts while watching the first season, I found I enjoyed a lot of the characters, dialogue, sets, and atmosphere without in any being able to figure out what in the world was supposed to be happening with the many interlocking story lines. The second season is a little tighter and more compelling. Anyway, the characters all have a pretty good grasp of how important it is to get your hands on the occasional warship.
He keeps using that word....
Words mean things. Oh yes, they most certainly do.
So this article popped up in my twitter feed, and I'm browsing it, basically agreeing with the author's premise, but then I caught this line:
"I wasn’t a Christian for the first part of my life. I knew it, and I didn’t want anyone to be mistaken. Now that I am a Christian, I don’t want anyone to believe that I’m an atheist, or a Mormon, or a Roman Catholic, or a Hindu."
So this article popped up in my twitter feed, and I'm browsing it, basically agreeing with the author's premise, but then I caught this line:
"I wasn’t a Christian for the first part of my life. I knew it, and I didn’t want anyone to be mistaken. Now that I am a Christian, I don’t want anyone to believe that I’m an atheist, or a Mormon, or a Roman Catholic, or a Hindu."
Oh dear. So I stopped reading the article at that point and went immediately to the comments. And they did not disappoint. It wasn't quite a refight of the Reformation, but it's pretty close.
I'm always suspicious of "non-denominational" because what ever your opinions are of a denomination, it's an agreed upon set of beliefs that everybody (well, maybe not everybody) in that denomination agrees to. Or at least says they do. Or something like that. I'm always suspicious that non-denominational types are just making it up as they go, and in the end, it's like that line from the movie: "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
Were You There
Continuing with the music from my church's Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. They've been hitting on all cylinders.
I'm sad today. My neighbors put their dog down, because she had been aggressive to passing pedestrians and they couldn't figure out how to correct her behavior and save her. I understand why they felt they had to do it, but I'm horrified. Nothing speaks to me about our fallen state more deeply than our deranged relations with animals. This dog thought she was doing the right thing protecting her home. She trusted her people and couldn't understand what they wanted from her.
Sometimes it causes me to tremble.
I'm sad today. My neighbors put their dog down, because she had been aggressive to passing pedestrians and they couldn't figure out how to correct her behavior and save her. I understand why they felt they had to do it, but I'm horrified. Nothing speaks to me about our fallen state more deeply than our deranged relations with animals. This dog thought she was doing the right thing protecting her home. She trusted her people and couldn't understand what they wanted from her.
Sometimes it causes me to tremble.
10 Interesting Things about EVE Online, Whether You Play Or Not
I haven't played in more than a year; other things are consuming my time right now. But I ran across this video at Daddy Warpig's and one of the first things it talks about is that one of the diplomats murdered in Bengazi was a player. The rest are kind of interesting as well.
Go to dark Gethsemane
Go to dark Gethsemane,
You who feel the tempter's pow'r;
Your Redeemer's conflict see;
Watch with Him one bitter hour;
Turn not from His griefs away;
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
Follow to the judgment hall;
View the Lord of life arraigned;
O the worm-wood and the gall!
O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suff'ring, shame, or loss;
Learn of Him to bear the cross.
Calv'ry's mournful mountain climb
There' adoring at His feet,
Mark the miracle of time,
God's own sacrifice complete:
"It is finished!" Hear the cry;
Learn of Jesus Christ to die.
Franchise
We once had a long discussion about the franchise, questioning whether the universal franchise was really a good idea and debating approaches. The debate took place here, at VC, and at Elise's place. Different models were offered: a Starship Troopers model that linked citizenship to military or other public service; a property qualification, for 'skin in the game' reasons; I think we also discussed some education qualification. In the end, none of it proved very persuasive, although it was interesting to see what arguments people had for and against things like the service qualification.
I think the debate was worthwhile, although it offended some readers so badly that they asked to have their blogs removed from the sidebar so they wouldn't be associated with someone who would entertain the question. Well, philosophers entertain a lot of ideas; as someone said, the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it.
So, I'm prepared to entertain the idea. How about denying the franchise just to white men?
The idea is first justified by consequences: progressives would do way better if white men didn't vote, not just in America but across the Anglosphere. Isn't that unfair, to deny people the vote just because they don't vote the way you'd like? Why yes, the author admits:
I think the debate was worthwhile, although it offended some readers so badly that they asked to have their blogs removed from the sidebar so they wouldn't be associated with someone who would entertain the question. Well, philosophers entertain a lot of ideas; as someone said, the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it.
So, I'm prepared to entertain the idea. How about denying the franchise just to white men?
The idea is first justified by consequences: progressives would do way better if white men didn't vote, not just in America but across the Anglosphere. Isn't that unfair, to deny people the vote just because they don't vote the way you'd like? Why yes, the author admits:
Let's be clear, it may be unfair, but a moratorium on the franchise for white males for a period of between 20 and 30 years is a small price to pay for the pain inflicted by white males on others, particularly those with black, female-identifying bodies. In addition, white men should not be stripped of their other rights, and this withholding of the franchise should only be a temporary measure, as the world rights the wrongs of the past.So, they won't be stripped of their rights, other than voting rights? Well, and property rights: it turns out, the whole point of this is to take their money.
At the same time, a denial of the franchise to white men, could see a redistribution of global assets to their rightful owners. After all, white men have used the imposition of Western legal systems around the world to reinforce modern capitalism. A period of twenty years without white men in the world's parliaments and voting booths will allow legislation to be passed which could see the world's wealth far more equitably shared. The violence of white male wealth and income inequality will be a thing of the past.Ok, so, just voting rights and property rights, then. Oddly enough, there's actually a solid philosophical argument against that exact combination. It's fine to have redistribution in an oligarchy, Aristotle says, because the regular redistribution of wealth to the poor makes them willing to accept a lack of political control. But you can't have redistribution in a democracy, as this will produce violent revolt:
This redistribution of the world's wealth is long overdue[.]
In democracies the rich should be spared; not only should their property not be divided, but their incomes also, which in some states are taken from them imperceptibly, should be protected. It is a good thing to prevent the wealthy citizens, even if they are willing from undertaking expensive and useless public services, such as the giving of choruses, torch-races, and the like. In an oligarchy, on the other hand, great care should be taken of the poor, and lucrative offices should go to them; if any of the wealthy classes insult them, the offender should be punished more severely than if he had wronged one of his own class.So, denying people power for the purpose of taking their wealth is right out. If you give them the power, you can claim that they owe you compensation from their wealth. If you take the power, you have to spare their wealth. Trying to take the power so you can take their wealth reliably produces civil war.
An Act of Theft, or Defacement?
The artist who crafted the charging bull sculpture on Wall Street is irritated that his work has been revised without his permission.
I guess the bull (and the bear) are some of those animal spirits that Keynes was talking about. William Safire apparently wrote on the history of the phrase.
An attorney for [artist] Di Modica, Norman Siegel, said the 4-foot-tall bronze girl was created as part of an advertising campaign for Boston-based investment firm State Street Global Advisors and its placement opposite the bull exploits the earlier sculpture for commercial gain and negates its positive message.Arguably the second sculpture steals something from the first work, as the first work is necessary for the effect of the second work. He seems to be charging that it's a bit more than that, though: that the act is one of defacement, such that his positive and optimistic sculpture is transformed into a big meanie.
"The placement of the statue of the young girl in opposition to 'Charging Bull' has undermined the integrity and modified the 'Charging Bull'" Siegel said. "The 'Charging Bull' no longer carries a positive, optimistic message. Rather it has been transformed into a negative force and a threat."
I guess the bull (and the bear) are some of those animal spirits that Keynes was talking about. William Safire apparently wrote on the history of the phrase.
The phrase that Keynes made famous in economics has a long history. "Physitions teache that there ben thre kindes of spirites", wrote Bartholomew Traheron in his 1543 translation of a text on surgery, "animal, vital, and natural. The animal spirite hath his seate in the brayne ... called animal, bycause it is the first instrument of the soule, which the Latins call animam." William Wood in 1719 was the first to apply it in economics: "The Increase of our Foreign Trade...whence has arisen all those Animal Spirits, those Springs of Riches which has enabled us to spend so many millions for the preservation of our Liberties." Hear, hear. Novelists seized its upbeat sense with enthusiasm. Daniel Defoe, in "Robinson Crusoe": "That the surprise may not drive the Animal Spirits from the Heart." Jane Austen used it to mean "ebullience" in "Pride and Prejudice": "She had high animal spirits." Benjamin Disraeli, a novelist in 1844, used it in that sense: "He...had great animal spirits, and a keen sense of enjoyment."I thought it was a reference to Descartes, though, who uses the term in Passions of the Soul as part of an explanation of how passion can interfere with rational decision-making. That seemed to be what Keynes was talking about, but perhaps Safire was right.
Near Certainties
Putin says that the gas attack in Syria was a "false flag," and also that he just knows that we'll be seeing a lot more of them soon.
He has that feeling.
He has that feeling.
Old Norse's Influence on English
Since everyone is enjoying this game -- both here and at AVI's place -- here's a thesis on how English was changed by another language. This one's not on French or Celtic forms, but on Old Norse forms.
(H/t: Medievalists)
"Studies have revealed that about 400 words in English are incontestably Scandinavian in origin and are still in daily use in standard, literary English (Geipel, 1971, p.69). Although 400 words are a mere fraction of those 20,000-30,000 words it must be acknowledged that most of the ON terms left behind by the Vikings are the very bedrock of English lexicon and the most frequently occurring words in spoken English. Geipel also takes this further and states that if rural dialects are added the number goes quickly from 400 to 2,000 items, enough to allow a person to carry on a simple conversation using entirely ON terms."One of these words is "they" and its variations, which you probably use many times a day.
(H/t: Medievalists)
The Obvious Answer
Last week, a driver in Stockholm completed the latest in a series of Islamist murders by truck, the most famous being in Nice, France. The local paper has come to the obvious conclusion.
Cars and other vehicles “have turned into deadly weapons”, and should be banished from cities to stop attacks like the one in Stockholm from happening in future, according to Aftonbladet editorialist Eva Franchell.Yes, we should ban cars and trucks from cities. The vast amounts of food needed to keep the populations of these cities from starving will henceforth be beamed in by Starfleet Command.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)