The surname MacLeod (pronounced mc-loud) (Scottish Gaelic: MacLeòid) means son of Leod. The name Leod is an Anglicization of the Scottish Gaelic name Leòd, which is thought to have been derived from the Old Norse name Ljótr, meaning ugly.The man might be, but the pipes are not.
Ugly's Son
Easter
I can't improve upon AVI's Easter post, which brought attention to an aspect of the story I hadn't thought about before. I'll simply refer you to it.
Happy Easter, all.
Happy Easter, all.
The Big Short
I just finished listening to The Big Short, which was pretty good. It was odd not to hear the least mention of the role of the Community Reinvestment Act in the mania to issue loans that no one seriously expected to be repaid. It also was odd, in all the discussion of the confusion of guys going short who wondered "who are the crazy people who are taking the long side of this bet?"--never hearing any mention of the appetite of Fannie Mae et al. in buying up the junk mortgages. Possibly they had a smaller role than I had gathered. In every other ways, it's a very informative discussion of how structured finance worked and how deliberately opaque all the terms were. There is a more comprehensible explanation of how badly the rating agencies dropped the ball, and the consequences of their dereliction, than I've seen before.
Back on this Side of the Sea
The trip to the desert went as well as could be hoped, and better than expected. I’ve touched down on American soil, and with one more hop will be home.
Special thanks to Thomas for remembering Zell Miller. Though I never met him, he was an important man in my life. I wish we had many more like him. He will be missed. His kind is passing from the world. They will all be missed.
Special thanks to Thomas for remembering Zell Miller. Though I never met him, he was an important man in my life. I wish we had many more like him. He will be missed. His kind is passing from the world. They will all be missed.
A Nice Set and an Interview with Nathaniel Rateliffe
Earlier this month, Seattle KEXP had the band on to play a few tunes and to interview them. Apparently, they were getting ready to pack it in and get jobs when the song SOB took off. The songs are from the new album, I believe.
A two-minute hate for "privatization" and "Kochs"
This Politico coverage of the sacking of VA secretary Shulkin is bizarre. I must be so far in the conservative echo chamber that I'd lost sight of how even moderately leftist people view the dangers of allowing vets to go outside the nonfunctional VA system to get actual care from actual private doctors. To Politico, apparently, this is "privatizing VA benefits while leaving taxpayers with the bill." If the point is to provide vets with benefits, I'm at a loss to see what's wrong with using taxpayer funds to pay private doctors. Isn't that what Medicare does, or theoretically does? Usually we see complaints about the juxtaposition of "privatizing" with "taxpayer" funds when it's a pseudo-investment, as in infrastructure, and the upside is on the private side while the downside is left to the taxpayers.
Google Actually Has More Data on Us than My Paranoia Had Suggested
Over in The Guardian, Dylan Curran goes through many of the different kinds of data Google has on its users and how that data is collected. Some interesting bits:
He gives links to see Google's files on you for each of these kinds of data, and others. Creepily, Google apparently keeps information you have deleted.
And then ...
Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you’ve been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone. ...
Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices. ...
Google stores all of your YouTube history ...
Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.
This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve taken on your phone, the businesses you’ve bought from, the products you’ve bought through Google …
They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you’ve purchased, the Google groups you’re in, the websites you’ve created, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day …
He gives links to see Google's files on you for each of these kinds of data, and others. Creepily, Google apparently keeps information you have deleted.
And then ...
Manage to gain access to someone’s Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.I thought I might have avoided some of this by not being logged in to Google most of the time, which is a good step. Then I noticed that when I visit this blog, I always have the option to post, and thus must be signed in. Oh well. Guess I'll change that now.
Falconry, Kidnapping, and Syria
Robert F. Worth has an interesting article in the New York Times about a band of kidnapped Qatari falconers and the ransom paid for them. Here is a taste:
A week later, the money still impounded, the Qatari team left Baghdad in the same jet that had brought them. They were now accompanied by two dozen Qataris, including members of the ruling Al Thani family, who had been kidnapped during a hunting trip in southern Iraq 16 months earlier. The story of what happened on that trip has not been reported until now. It entails a ransom deal of staggering size and complexity in which the Qataris paid vast sums to terrorists on both sides of the Middle East’s sectarian divide, fueling the region’s spiraling civil wars.
...
To Arab falconers, the houbara bustard — a bug-eyed, long-legged creature about the size of a large chicken — is the king of game birds. It is a fast flier with an unusual defense: When cornered, it vomits an oily green substance that can temporarily blind an attacking falcon or hobble its wings. In the days before oil was discovered in the Arabian desert, the houbara’s seasonal return every fall was met with celebratory poetry and long hunts on camelback. The Land Rover made things a lot easier, but chasing the houbara, whose stringy flesh is said to be an aphrodisiac, remains one of the hallowed pursuits — along with thoroughbred stallions, huge yachts and French chateaus — that occupy the minds of Persian Gulf royalty.
In late November 2015, a large group of Qatari falcon hunters left Doha in a column of 4-by-4 vehicles and headed south. Crossing the Saudi border, the convoy turned north, traversing a portion of Kuwait and continuing on to their destination, the southern desert of Iraq, 450 miles from Doha ...
Rest in Peace, Zell Miller
Zell Miller passed away last Friday.
Miller served his nation in the Marines, then served the State of Georgia as a state senator, lt. governor, governor, and US senator. He was a lifelong Democrat who, in my opinion, did what he believed was best for the nation rather than his party.
He also wrote some interesting books. Two that might interest those at the Hall are A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat and Purt Nigh Gone: The Old Mountain Ways, a book about Appalachian history and culture.
Miller served his nation in the Marines, then served the State of Georgia as a state senator, lt. governor, governor, and US senator. He was a lifelong Democrat who, in my opinion, did what he believed was best for the nation rather than his party.
He also wrote some interesting books. Two that might interest those at the Hall are A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat and Purt Nigh Gone: The Old Mountain Ways, a book about Appalachian history and culture.
Remembering who got elected
I've always liked John Bolton.
Ronald Reagan famously said that no war in his lifetime ever started because America was too strong.
Scott Pruitt strikes again
The man environmentalists love to hate has instituted the un-heard-of rule that EPA regulations must be based on public data. Is there no end to the science-bashing by Trump appointees?
Curling and Cars
I am only showing this video ...
because it makes this one funnier ...
although I do have to feel bad for the folks caught in that.
because it makes this one funnier ...
although I do have to feel bad for the folks caught in that.
Crimean Tom
Today, Wikipedia's "Did you know ..." section mentioned a hero of the Crimean War. From the full entry on Crimean Tom:
During the Crimean War British and French forces captured Sevastopol from the Russians on 9 September 1855 after an almost year-long siege. Lieutenant William Gair of the 6th Dragoon Guards, who was seconded to the Field Train Department as a deputy assistant commissary, led patrols to search the cellars of buildings for supplies. Gair noticed a cat, covered in dust and grime, that was sat on top of a pile of rubbish between two injured people. The cat, unperturbed by the surrounding commotion, allowed himself to be picked up by Gair. The cat, estimated to have been 8 years old when found, had survived within the city throughout the siege.
Gair took the cat back to his quarters and he lived and ate with a group of British officers who initially named him Tom and later Crimean Tom or Sevastopol Tom. The occupying armies were struggling to find supplies, especially of food, in a city much-deprived by the year-long siege. It is said that the officers noticed how fat Tom was getting and realised he must have been feeding off a good supply of mice nearby. Knowing that the mice may have been themselves feeding off hidden Russian supplies they followed Tom to an area cut off by rubble. Here, they found a storeroom with food supplies that helped to save British and French soldiers from starvation. Tom later led the officers to several smaller caches of supplies near the city docks.
St. Patrick's Day Movie Recommendations
So the family has decided that we are to stay in this evening and watch a movie.
I'm well equipped with Guinness and Tullamore Dew, and my lovely Mrs. has prepared some fine corned beef.
I can think of a few obvious suggestions for St. Paddy's Day movies- The Quiet Man for instance, but I think I'd get vetoed on that one.
I suspect you all might have some suggestions...
So?
I'm well equipped with Guinness and Tullamore Dew, and my lovely Mrs. has prepared some fine corned beef.
I can think of a few obvious suggestions for St. Paddy's Day movies- The Quiet Man for instance, but I think I'd get vetoed on that one.
I suspect you all might have some suggestions...
So?
With Dems like this . . . .
If the Democrats take back the House or Senate with Democrats like Conor Lamb, what will the House and Senate look like?
[W]ill Democrats run moderates who demand Nancy Pelosi resign and who hail their Second Amendment cred in other races this year, all of whom refuse to criticize Donald Trump? Will they even run one more challenger who follows the Lamb pattern? Not terribly likely, which is why Lamb’s win may not mean much at all seven months down the road.On the other hand,
[L]et’s not pretend he was basically a Righty. He opposes the tax cuts, supports Big Labor, opposes Obamacare repeal, opposes mainstream abortion restrictions (despite his pro-life song and dance), and is strongly opposed to entitlement reform. He’ll be a fairly reliable vote for the Democrats on most issues, even if he was strategic about playing up certain cultural differences.
Sleazy FBI agents
This kind of thing really does not look good.
Newly discovered text messages obtained by The Federalist reveal two key federal law enforcement officials conspired to meet with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge who presided over the federal case against Michael Flynn. The judge, Rudolph Contreras, was recused from handling the case just days after accepting the guilty plea of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser who was charged with making false statements to federal investigators.
The text messages about Contreras between controversial Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lawyer Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence official who was kicked off Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, were deliberately hidden from Congress, multiple congressional investigators told The Federalist. In the messages, Page and Strzok, who are rumored to have been engaged in an illicit romantic affair, discussed Strzok’s personal friendship with Contreras and how to leverage that relationship in ongoing counterintelligence matters.
“Rudy is on the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]!” Page excitedly texted Strzok on July 25, 2016. “Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”
“I did,” Strzok responded. “I need to get together with him.”
“[He] said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at.”
Contreras was appointed to the top surveillance court on May 19, 2016, federal records show.
The pair even schemed about how to set up a cocktail or dinner party just so Contreras, Strzok, and Page could speak without arousing suspicion that they were colluding. Strzok expressed concern that a one-on-one meeting between the two men might require Contreras’ recusal from matters in which Strzok was involved.
“[REDACTED] suggested a social setting with others would probably be better than a one on one meeting,” Strzok told Page. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to invite you to that cocktail party.”
“Have to come up with some other work people cover for action,” Strzok added.
Review: Birra Etrusca
Dogfish Head brewery, in partnership with Birra del Borgo and Baladin, and biomolecular archeologist Patrick McGovern, have produced a reproduction of an ancient ale from the 8th century B.C. This, as far as they can tell, is what people in Italy drank before the arrival of wine.
It may be hard to imagine Italy before wine, which is itself of great antiquity. Indeed wine itself is at least eight thousand years old. However, it did not exist everywhere eight thousand years ago, and it is currently thought to have been spread into the Mediterranean regions of Europe by the Phoenicians. By the time of Homer, of course, wine was already a mental fixture in southern Europe.
The drink is refreshing, fruity in character. It features hazelnut flour as well as wheat (of heirloom varieties, they note, although I doubt any of our heirloom wheats are as old as the beverage they're aiming at here). It draws additional sugars for fermentation from honey and pomegranates, plus other fruits.
If you come across a bottle, and you're interested in exploring ancient things, it's worth a try.
It may be hard to imagine Italy before wine, which is itself of great antiquity. Indeed wine itself is at least eight thousand years old. However, it did not exist everywhere eight thousand years ago, and it is currently thought to have been spread into the Mediterranean regions of Europe by the Phoenicians. By the time of Homer, of course, wine was already a mental fixture in southern Europe.
The drink is refreshing, fruity in character. It features hazelnut flour as well as wheat (of heirloom varieties, they note, although I doubt any of our heirloom wheats are as old as the beverage they're aiming at here). It draws additional sugars for fermentation from honey and pomegranates, plus other fruits.
If you come across a bottle, and you're interested in exploring ancient things, it's worth a try.
Irony
My meter is pegged.
From The Blaze:
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/974355843515895808
Eric Hines
From The Blaze:
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/974355843515895808
Eric Hines
Leaders and the led
Arthur Herman on "Why Tillerson Had to Go":
Trump thought he was getting a lion in Tillerson. Instead, he was getting a Saint Bernard. Like the breed, Tillerson may be large and imposing at first glance; but he is no fighter, least of all against the bureaucratic mentality that permeates the U.S. State Department.
Here we can stipulate a third point. Virtually every secretary of state since Cordell Hull has suffered one of two fates. Either he or she becomes the president’s representative to the bureaucracy — and when necessary the ruthless enforcer of the chief executive’s will in Foggy Bottom — or he or she becomes the bureaucracy’s representative to the president, and assumes the role of bringing the State Department’s views to the chief executive’s attention — even at times serving as an advocate of those views.
Profiling
More than one profile, really. Scientific American gives this one:
According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.But there's another profile that these men fit: they're particularly good citizens.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives.
Crime rates involving gun owners with carry licenses have consistently been about 0.02% of all carry permit holders since Florida’s right-to-carry law started in 1988.... People with concealed carry licenses are:Its as if they respect the rights of others -- in spite of all those alleged crises of meaning and stuff.
5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public
13.5 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the general public
Better "17s"
A public school teacher of my long acquaintance posed this the other day. I didn't understand the "17" reference until today, but the 'protests' made a lot of the 17 because that was the number of people killed while police on the scene absolutely refused to do their jobs and stop murders in progress.
Unlike the 'protests,' here are some things students could do that might actually make a difference.
That's all probably too hard. Virtue signalling is easier, especially when the path has been paved for you by adult organizers.
Unlike the 'protests,' here are some things students could do that might actually make a difference.
That's all probably too hard. Virtue signalling is easier, especially when the path has been paved for you by adult organizers.
Reason Magazine: "No."
Today, all across the country, adults who oppose the 2nd Amendment are herding school children out before cameras to pose with signs suggesting that the students oppose gun rights. Reason magazine has a thoughtful answer.
Where this lands us is that even if today's protesters get their way and legislators vote to impose restrictions on gun ownership and self-defense, that doesn't mean that those of us who value those rights will change our conduct. Statutes aren't like the law of gravity—we get to choose whether we're going to abide by them, or else actively oppose them and sabotage their enforcement....The same people in favor of gun confiscation argue that immigration laws shouldn't be enforced by local police because the consequent refusal to talk to police will make policing that community impossible.
The track record on disobeying such laws is very clear. Residents of Connecticut and New York defied requirements that they register their so-called "assault weapons." Gun owners in Colorado ignored mandates that they pass all their person-to-person sales through the background check system. Even the French and Germans flip the bird to laws that gun-haters can only dream of imposing in the United States, owning millions of illegal firearms that supporters of restrictions wish they didn't have.
Exercising your liberty in total contradiction to restrictive laws is a good thing, by the way. Nothing limits the power of the state like the outer boundaries of people's willingness to do what they're told. ...
I don't begrudge today's protesters their right to voice their opinions, even as they call for restrictions on my own rights. Their rights to free speech and free assembly are, after all, among the rights that aren't subject to popular opinion or debate. I even wish them good weather and a pleasant experience.
But they need to be aware that, just as I would never try to impose limits on their liberty, I and people like me will never submit to the restrictions that they demand.
How's Your Hearing?
A sociologist talks to rural voters for eight years. His results?
Sounds like they've got their candidate for 2020 all lined up, though. She, at least, sees the world just the very same way that they do.
Robert WuthnowI'd have thought you'd have had to have worked harder at something before it tired you out.
They believe that Washington really does have power over their lives. They recognize that the federal government controls vast resources, and they feel threatened if they perceive Washington’s interest being directed more toward urban areas than rural areas, or toward immigrants more than non-immigrants, or toward minority populations instead of the traditional white Anglo population.
Sean Illing
But that’s just racism and cultural resentment, and calling it a manifestation of some deeper anxiety doesn’t alter that fact.
Robert Wuthnow
I don’t disagree with that.
...
Sean Illing
I’m still struggling to understand what exactly these people mean when they complain about the “moral decline” of America. At one point, you interview a woman who complains about the country’s “moral decline” and then cites, as evidence, the fact that she can’t spank her children without “the government” intervening. Am I supposed to take this seriously?
Robert Wuthnow
It’s an interesting question. What does it mean for us to take that seriously?
...
Sean Illing
Which is why I’d argue that the divide between rural and urban America is becoming unbridgeable. We can talk all we like about the sanctity of these small communities and the traditional values that hold them together, but, as you say, many of the people who live in these places hold racist views and support racist candidates and we can’t accommodate that.
Robert Wuthnow
Yes, this is one of the most difficult aspects of the discussion we’re now having about morality in America. What counts as moral varies so much from place to place. In the South, for example, you have clergy who are vehement about abortion or homosexuality, and they preach this in the pulpits every Sunday. But then they turn a blind eye to policies that hurt the poor or discriminate against minorities.
Sean Illing
I know a lot of people who don’t live in rural America are tired of being told they need to understand all these resentments.
Sounds like they've got their candidate for 2020 all lined up, though. She, at least, sees the world just the very same way that they do.
Road Trips
I'm home today, but I've been on the road an awful lot lately. More to come! It's pretty exhausting.
In point of fact, the next two or three months look pretty exhausting.
All the same, good things come to those who work for it -- well, at least, that's the way to lay your bets.
In point of fact, the next two or three months look pretty exhausting.
All the same, good things come to those who work for it -- well, at least, that's the way to lay your bets.
The Shape of Water
I saw the movie The Shape of Water recently. I really only have a couple of comments about it.
First, it seems to be a remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, only if the creature were the good guy.
Second, a quick way to get a grasp on the politics of a movie is to look at who the bad guys are. If the bad guys are essentially normal, patriotic Americans dressed up with evil motivations and disgusting habits, you're watching a left-wing movie. A somewhat less-frequently-helpful method is to see who the good guys are.
In Shape, both methods are useful. The bad guys are US government agents and soldiers during the early Cold War. The good guys are a mute woman, a black woman, a Soviet scientist / spy, a gay man, and the creature.
There's more that could be said, but I'll leave it at that.
First, it seems to be a remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, only if the creature were the good guy.
Second, a quick way to get a grasp on the politics of a movie is to look at who the bad guys are. If the bad guys are essentially normal, patriotic Americans dressed up with evil motivations and disgusting habits, you're watching a left-wing movie. A somewhat less-frequently-helpful method is to see who the good guys are.
In Shape, both methods are useful. The bad guys are US government agents and soldiers during the early Cold War. The good guys are a mute woman, a black woman, a Soviet scientist / spy, a gay man, and the creature.
There's more that could be said, but I'll leave it at that.
Forest for the Trees
In testimony last November before the panel, Erik Prince was questioned extensively about the January 2017 Seychelles meeting and whether it was an attempt to set up secret communications between the Trump administration and Russia. As Prince furiously denied that was the case, he also did not reveal that George Nader -- a Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East specialist with ties to the Trump team -- also attended at least one meeting there, raising fresh questions among Democrats about whether Prince misled the panel when testifying under oath.If the meeting had been about "setting up secret communications between the Russians and the Trump administration," that would mean that there were not any extant communications. The meeting was in January 2017, only days before Trump would become President. Where's the 2016 collusion if he had to set up back-channel comms at as late a date as this? If you prove the thing you're asking about, you've proven that 2016 collusion probably didn't exist.
A possible counter argument: perhaps they'd had such comms before, but they'd become compromised and had to be abandoned. If that were the case, though, the same intelligence community that's been leaking like a sieve here would have leaked this too.
Dispatches from Kennesaw
I passed by Kennesaw, Georgia last night on my way home from the Dropkick Murphys concert near Atlanta. (If you have the opportunity, they put on a great live show.) It's now a full-fledged suburb of Atlanta, not the quiet little town it was when it first adopted the law described in this article.
“In Kennesaw, Georgia, local law says that ‘every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm.’The violent crime rate is below two percent all these years later.
"‘If you're going to commit a crime in Kennesaw and you're the criminal -- are you going to take a chance that that homeowner is a law-abiding citizen?’ asked Kennesaw Mayor Derek Easterling."
Runoff
The Texas primaries were today. In my four-way race, I came in first by 3 votes and will face a run-off on May 22 with the guy in second place. We both got about 32% of the vote. The other guys got 24% and 12%. Since the fellow I'm running against is basically the establishment candidate, I like my chances for picking off the votes of the other two.
Otherwise, all the incumbents in my county were re-elected, despite all the talk about the upheaval because of the storm. The seat I'm running for is open, as the current commissioner elected not to run again.
Otherwise, all the incumbents in my county were re-elected, despite all the talk about the upheaval because of the storm. The seat I'm running for is open, as the current commissioner elected not to run again.
Against Conformity
An academic from 'low backgrounds' asserts her claim not to have to adopt the mores that rule in the Ivory Tower.
The image is no longer unsullied simplicity but befouled by bigotry, misogyny and cruelty. This too is a stereotype, and one that, however different, achieves force precisely in its distance. I wrote about this just after the 2016 presidential election, and was surprised by how quickly the contempt directed at the poor rural voter came my way. A friend of mine summed up the new atmosphere: ‘No one wants to read about poor rural people struggling to walk upright.’ This too works to keep the ivory tower pristine, for even fewer now are likely to confess low origins.
Academia’s representations of the poor and rural inspire an oppositional impulse in me – a resistance to seeing people like mine as people like that, as people tidily captured, whether quaint or corrupt, pitiable or pitiless. Assimilation in academia entails the denial of one’s own experience and history. It demands epistemic sacrifice, a willingness to shed complexity and, along with it, possibilities. It’s the possibilities I begrudge the most.
Stripping out the Christianity
There's a piece at the Federalist arguing against the authenticity of the new "A Wrinkle in Time."
To take just one example, consider the centrality of Christianity to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Malory's sources are clear about Arthur's status as a Christian king. The whole book is built around the Christian liturgical year, so much so that you won't realize that scenes take place in winter or spring except by the feasts cited. The Quest for the Holy Grail makes up the dramatic center of the work, beginning at the high water mark of the secular Arthurian kingdom and hastening its downfall as so many knights -- successful at establishing worldly goods and attaining worldly virtue -- are destroyed by the pursuit of spiritual perfections of which they fall far short. Though the destruction of Arthur's kingdom is eventuated by Lancelot and Guinevere's sin, and Gawain's sin of pride and wrath in pursuing vengeance against them, the pursuit of the Holy Grail weakened the kingdom as a practical power; it stored up treasures in heaven for the martyrs, but at substantial earthly cost.
Yet go and find any version of the Arthurian story told since the 1970s, and you'll find that some sort of paganism is presented as the real moral core of the work. Arthur is secretly a worshiper of Mithras, or really the hero(ine)s were pagan goddess worshipers, or Merlin was secretly a pagan and guided Arthur around a benighted Christianity, or....
Indeed, the one easy counterexample is Tolkien. Tolkien's great work differs in that it barely makes reference to the Christianity it nevertheless assumes as basic to its structure. This seems to have been a conscious decision on Tolkien's part. You can engage with Frodo and Sam's quiet faith based on the stars being beyond Sauron's reach; you don't need to believe in a transcendent God. You can examine the heroism of Gimli and Legolas, or their friendship across differences of species and culture and history. Aragorn's acceptance of his need to strive heroically against the winds of fate is noble in a way that a Roman or a Viking would appreciate. Only occasionally, in the whispers of Gandalf, do you get the idea that there is a hidden power directing the world, a "Secret Fire" before whose worn and tired servants even Balrogs cannot prevail.
Even at the end of the book, you have only received a hint that Gandalf is one of those beings like the 'Wrinkle in Time' messengers. If you don't read further into the legendarium, you'll never be told that Gandalf is not just a 'wizard,' but a Maiar, a kind of lower angel. Tolkien hid it for them, for reasons of his own.
Lee seems to feel that the Christian faith of L’Engle is not a big deal, and that it’s something that should be moved on from.... A story by a Christian author who made deliberate choices to incorporate Christian themes in a story about good vs. evil is a story with Christianity as a central theme, not just some minor element to be shrugged off.The culture as a whole is trying hard to shrug off Christianity, so it's not surprising that they wish to do so here. Nor is this the first time this has happened. Though C. S. Lewis (mentioned in the piece) and L'Engle were explicitly attempting to tell Christian fairy tales that would reinforce the faith, other authors for whom Christianity was central have also seen it stripped of its place in their works.
The Christianity of “A Wrinkle in Time” is not implied or subtle, but rather masterfully and beautifully interwoven throughout the whole story. It’s a shame if the motivations and understandings of the characters are stripped from them. At the climax of the book, when the main character, Meg, is discouraged and needs hope, it is the Bible that is quoted to her: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
To take just one example, consider the centrality of Christianity to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Malory's sources are clear about Arthur's status as a Christian king. The whole book is built around the Christian liturgical year, so much so that you won't realize that scenes take place in winter or spring except by the feasts cited. The Quest for the Holy Grail makes up the dramatic center of the work, beginning at the high water mark of the secular Arthurian kingdom and hastening its downfall as so many knights -- successful at establishing worldly goods and attaining worldly virtue -- are destroyed by the pursuit of spiritual perfections of which they fall far short. Though the destruction of Arthur's kingdom is eventuated by Lancelot and Guinevere's sin, and Gawain's sin of pride and wrath in pursuing vengeance against them, the pursuit of the Holy Grail weakened the kingdom as a practical power; it stored up treasures in heaven for the martyrs, but at substantial earthly cost.
Yet go and find any version of the Arthurian story told since the 1970s, and you'll find that some sort of paganism is presented as the real moral core of the work. Arthur is secretly a worshiper of Mithras, or really the hero(ine)s were pagan goddess worshipers, or Merlin was secretly a pagan and guided Arthur around a benighted Christianity, or....
Indeed, the one easy counterexample is Tolkien. Tolkien's great work differs in that it barely makes reference to the Christianity it nevertheless assumes as basic to its structure. This seems to have been a conscious decision on Tolkien's part. You can engage with Frodo and Sam's quiet faith based on the stars being beyond Sauron's reach; you don't need to believe in a transcendent God. You can examine the heroism of Gimli and Legolas, or their friendship across differences of species and culture and history. Aragorn's acceptance of his need to strive heroically against the winds of fate is noble in a way that a Roman or a Viking would appreciate. Only occasionally, in the whispers of Gandalf, do you get the idea that there is a hidden power directing the world, a "Secret Fire" before whose worn and tired servants even Balrogs cannot prevail.
Even at the end of the book, you have only received a hint that Gandalf is one of those beings like the 'Wrinkle in Time' messengers. If you don't read further into the legendarium, you'll never be told that Gandalf is not just a 'wizard,' but a Maiar, a kind of lower angel. Tolkien hid it for them, for reasons of his own.
The Powers of a King
Conservative Review points out that yesterday was supposed to be the end of the DACA program, except that the courts have so far said that the President isn't allowed to end a program created purely by the action of the previous President.
1) The Iran Deal was a treaty governing nuclear weapons that was effected without any input from the legislature -- the Corker-Cardin bill set up a means for Congress to express disapproval, but Democrats in the Senate filibustered a vote, so no vote was ever taken on approval or disapproval. The 2/3rds majority consent, required by the language of the Constitution, wasn't seriously considered as a standard the Obama administration would attempt to meet.
2) The 'denizens of aliens' was the intent of DACA. The courts are merely affirming Obama's right to rule as king, such that his successor by democratic election may not undo his fiat.
3) At this point most of the regulations on commerce originate in the executive. At some point the legislature consented to the delegation of its authority to the executive, and now most things affecting commerce that have the force of law are created undemocratically by the executive bureaucracy.
Serious problems, all, and it's just one paragraph of one of the Federalist papers.
UPDATE:
Oh, and as for the power of declaring war, Obama's actions in Libya never once passed any sort of 'by your leave' by Congress.
Yet thanks to a political system that has crowned district judges the kings of our society, the very underpinnings of the self-governing nation established in the Declaration of Independence have now been abandoned. We have district judges who can unilaterally make denizens of aliens – the power of a king, according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #69.The relevant section of Federalist 69 is about why a president is preferable to a king.
The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for FOUR years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a QUALIFIED negative upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an ABSOLUTE negative. The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that of DECLARING war, and of RAISING and REGULATING fleets and armies by his own authority. The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the formation of treaties; the other is the SOLE POSSESSOR of the power of making treaties. The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges whatever; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies. The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.I've highlighted three areas in which we've gone astray.
1) The Iran Deal was a treaty governing nuclear weapons that was effected without any input from the legislature -- the Corker-Cardin bill set up a means for Congress to express disapproval, but Democrats in the Senate filibustered a vote, so no vote was ever taken on approval or disapproval. The 2/3rds majority consent, required by the language of the Constitution, wasn't seriously considered as a standard the Obama administration would attempt to meet.
2) The 'denizens of aliens' was the intent of DACA. The courts are merely affirming Obama's right to rule as king, such that his successor by democratic election may not undo his fiat.
3) At this point most of the regulations on commerce originate in the executive. At some point the legislature consented to the delegation of its authority to the executive, and now most things affecting commerce that have the force of law are created undemocratically by the executive bureaucracy.
Serious problems, all, and it's just one paragraph of one of the Federalist papers.
UPDATE:
Oh, and as for the power of declaring war, Obama's actions in Libya never once passed any sort of 'by your leave' by Congress.
Some Appropriate Music for Leaving DC
Or, music for expressing one's feelings towards the governing class after a week of examining their exploits. It puts a man in a mood.
Language warning.
I'm back in the true South now, headed for home.
Language warning.
I'm back in the true South now, headed for home.
Trekking Through DC
I'm away north for a bit, trying to wrestle with some of the things I can affect within our national government. I'll be back in a while, perhaps by the weekend.
The weird hormone argument
USA Today follows a trend I'm seeing more often in recent years, to explain human failings in terms of testosterone. When the father is absent from the home, we're told, young men can't channel their innately destructive male hormones. Now it seems, however, that even young women don't do well in fatherless homes, and we can hardly blame their unchanneled testosterone for that. Nor does it make much sense to blame the testosterone of the absent father, which presumably isn't polluting the home from his new location across town or a couple of states away.
What does this leave? The mother, who is still present? Does she have toxic hormones?
Such a lot of silliness to avoid the idea that having both a mother and father present is a pretty good idea whenever you can pull it off, and not because of their complex chemical interactions.
What does this leave? The mother, who is still present? Does she have toxic hormones?
Such a lot of silliness to avoid the idea that having both a mother and father present is a pretty good idea whenever you can pull it off, and not because of their complex chemical interactions.
Not a bad argument
The problem with twisting legal arguments into a pretzel is that that loose may come back around and kick you in the butt:
A coalition of 20 states has filed a lawsuit alleging ObamaCare is unconstitutional.
They’re claiming that since the GOP eliminated the tax penalty associated with the individual mandate, that ObamaCare itself is no longer constitutional. …
The GOP tax law “eliminated the tax penalty of the ACA, without eliminating the mandate itself. What remains, then, is the individual mandate, without any accompanying exercise of Congress’s taxing power, which the Supreme Court already held that Congress has no authority to enact,” the complaint states.
“Not only is the individual mandate now unlawful, but this core provision is not severable from the rest of the ACA—as four Justices of the Supreme Court already concluded.”
What's a guy gotta do to get arrested in Broward County?
“We’ve accomplished reducing the arrests. Now it’s ‘how do we keep that up without making the schools a more dangerous place.’"
The thing that goes down
Once again we face the spectacle of legislators writing bills about weapons they know nothing of. They may as well outlaw weapons that are scary or icky.
The problem with public-sector unions in a nutshell
From HotAir, better today than it's been lately:
The authors are correct in citing the cost of these retirement packages as a problem. It’s the primary driver which has nearly sunk New Jersey’s state government and embroiled Chris Christie throughout his entire tenure as governor. So one way to look at this (if you happen to be a liberal) is to say, as the authors do, that strong unions are able to push back against cuts to benefits.
Well, that’s a dandy solution if you happen to be one of the people receiving those benefits or planning your retirement around them. But it doesn’t do anything for the tens of millions of people in the private sector who have little chance of landing a job that offers anywhere near that level of retirement stability. It also does nothing to magically make more money appear in state and municipal budgets to cover these skyrocketing expenses. The authors attempt to claim that such expensive pension plans are justified because “many public-sector jobs offer lower salaries than their private-sector counterparts. As a result, public employees tend to have far more stable and secure retirements than similarly situated private-sector workers."
No citation is offered for this incredible claim. If you look long and hard, you can probably find a handful of cases where it’s true, but for the most part and in nearly all cases, public sector workers earn more than their private-sector counterparts. And I did offer a linked citation for that. Perhaps even more embarrassingly, it’s from… The Washington Post.
What they should have been asking was why there was never anyone at the table arguing on behalf of the taxpayers when these labor agreements were originally crafted.
"Not according to this kid . . . aaaaaaaand I trust this kid"
Deputy Scott Peterson's counsel is floating the theory that he had a good reason not to go inside the Florida school building. It's not easy to square, however, with the eye-witness testimony of a horrified student.
Note the sequence of events described by senior Brandon Huff. He told reporters that Peterson didn’t move even while other teachers were running into the building, including Aaron Feis, who lost his life shielding his students.
Now you tell us
Senate Democrats are shocked, shocked to learn that politicizing the Supreme Court may not have been an ideal strategy.
“If stare decisis means anything, it must mean that a precedent should not be overturned simply because a differently composed court emerges,” the senators wrote. “Decision-making begins to look like prize-taking when precedents are reversed as Court majorities shift.” …
Col. Schlichter and the New Rules
I like Kurt Schlichter's stuff, generally speaking. Right now he is pushing government regulation of businesses going against conservatives:
The liberal elite is using its social and cultural ties to those at the helm of big companies to essentially blacklist the NRA, and thereby the tens of millions of Americans who support gun rights. But oppression is oppression whether it’s done by a government bureaucrat or a corporate one, and our principle of non-interference in business assumes business stays out of politics. But now National, Hertz, and others are cutting ties to the NRA, and liberals are advocating banks do the same. Their intent is clear – what they can't do in politics they will simply do by not allowing the representatives of people whose politics they don't like access to the infrastructure of society. And we're not supposed to do anything about it because, you know, free enterprise and stuff. You know, our principles.I think he has more of a point with companies like Google. Not giving a discount to a particular group isn't the same thing as denying its members "access to the infrastructure of society." On the other hand, an algorithm that keeps traffic away from a site because Google doesn't approve of its politics kinda does, to a point. Then again, there's always Duck Duck Go.
No. They are exercising political power. We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. ...
Ouch
"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagel, Ya'll.
If I have had one standing criticism of the government of the Great State of Georgia, it has been the degree to which it has bent over backwards to give away the rights of citizens in favor of corporate interests. On gun rights, on religious liberty, as on many other issues, once you knew what side Coca-Cola and Delta wanted to win, you knew what the Republican government would do -- no matter what their voters wanted, and no matter which constitutional right was being undermined by the action.
Not today.
Casey Cagel for Governor.
Not today.
Casey Cagel for Governor.
What they're teaching in the schools
A neighbor just told me her grandson's high school teacher is requiring the entire class to write a Congressman and demand gun control laws. There is no leeway in the position to be adopted, the penalty being a failing grade. I'm sorry to report that the fellow will be going along and even asked his grandmother not to complain directly to the school, for fear of retribution. He did say he was reporting the matter to his ROTC commander, so maybe something will come of that. Hey, I count my blessings that ROTC hasn't yet been run off the campus.
I told her the young man could at least write separately to the Congressman explaining the circumstances, so the congressional staff would know how little weight to place on the deluge of letters. This confused her at first; wasn't the teacher in charge of the mailing? Wouldn't she read all the letters and detect the heresy? At last I got across the message that the student could write separately, put it in his own envelope, affix a stamp to it, and put it in the mailbox himself. Good practice in learning how to communicate with his elected representatives. It sounds like she needed a refresher herself. I was very surprised how alien all this advice seemed to her. There is a fatal passivity, though she's quite a red-meat conservative.
I told her the young man could at least write separately to the Congressman explaining the circumstances, so the congressional staff would know how little weight to place on the deluge of letters. This confused her at first; wasn't the teacher in charge of the mailing? Wouldn't she read all the letters and detect the heresy? At last I got across the message that the student could write separately, put it in his own envelope, affix a stamp to it, and put it in the mailbox himself. Good practice in learning how to communicate with his elected representatives. It sounds like she needed a refresher herself. I was very surprised how alien all this advice seemed to her. There is a fatal passivity, though she's quite a red-meat conservative.
Trusting in Failure
The more we learn about what happened (and did not happen) in and around the recent mass murder, the more we are seeing that the institutions we erected to try and have some security simply failed to consider their primary functions in favor of more politically correct agendas, or simply exhibited cowardice.
-The School District enacted a progressive agenda to reduce the number of police interactions (arrests), which allowed the perpetrator to not be arrested and charged with assault, which would have red flagged him.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen refused to share information with State Social Services in their 2016 Investigation into the perps home.
-State Social Services failed to find anything actionable, or failed to act on actionable information in their 2016 investigation.
-The FBI failed to forward clear tips indicating a criminal threat.
-The FBI, five months earlier failed to act on an actionable criminal threat.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen was a coward, and perhaps also several other sheriff's deputies. (after watching this video- which implied that the coaches Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel, and Chris Hixon- ran past him to enter the building, while he stayed outside- I had to spend a few minutes on the heavy bag)
-Even now, it looks like the Broward Sheriff's office is in full CYA mode, rather than facing up to their apparently multiple and multi-valent failures. I commented to someone who said that the Sheriff needed to resign that 'if this were Japan, he'd be expected to do more than that'.
So at least three government agencies failed to take actions that might have prevented this event, some of them multiple times, but rather than raising the question of what the limits of just how well the government can protect us is, we're talking about guns, which we know is an issue that isn't moving anywhere and so is only crassly being used as a political cudgel, and in many cases, people hiding behind children to do it.
What we should be talking about are things like:
-Why aren't groups like No Notoriety getting any attention?
-How making these perps infamous potentially inspires others to emulate him
-How the media can help reduce the appeal of committing these acts
-How we can hold failures of the bureaucracy to account
-How we should deal with discipline in schools
-How we should be raising our kids, and especially our boys in a society that increasingly is devoid of fathers, or even father figures, such as God the Father.
-How a culture that values fame as if it were a virtue creates a hollowness in it's people
I think most of us here are of like mind, and understand these issues, but I just wanted to lay this all out somewhere, so please forgive my indulgence.
Since we've been again made to defend our Second Amendment rights yet again instead of actually dealing with the matters at hand, how about some appropriate music:
Grand Funk Railroad's "Don't let 'em Take Your Gun" (Produced by Frank Zappa)
Ted Hawkins- The Constitution
-The School District enacted a progressive agenda to reduce the number of police interactions (arrests), which allowed the perpetrator to not be arrested and charged with assault, which would have red flagged him.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen refused to share information with State Social Services in their 2016 Investigation into the perps home.
-State Social Services failed to find anything actionable, or failed to act on actionable information in their 2016 investigation.
-The FBI failed to forward clear tips indicating a criminal threat.
-The FBI, five months earlier failed to act on an actionable criminal threat.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen was a coward, and perhaps also several other sheriff's deputies. (after watching this video- which implied that the coaches Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel, and Chris Hixon- ran past him to enter the building, while he stayed outside- I had to spend a few minutes on the heavy bag)
-Even now, it looks like the Broward Sheriff's office is in full CYA mode, rather than facing up to their apparently multiple and multi-valent failures. I commented to someone who said that the Sheriff needed to resign that 'if this were Japan, he'd be expected to do more than that'.
So at least three government agencies failed to take actions that might have prevented this event, some of them multiple times, but rather than raising the question of what the limits of just how well the government can protect us is, we're talking about guns, which we know is an issue that isn't moving anywhere and so is only crassly being used as a political cudgel, and in many cases, people hiding behind children to do it.
What we should be talking about are things like:
-Why aren't groups like No Notoriety getting any attention?
-How making these perps infamous potentially inspires others to emulate him
-How the media can help reduce the appeal of committing these acts
-How we can hold failures of the bureaucracy to account
-How we should deal with discipline in schools
-How we should be raising our kids, and especially our boys in a society that increasingly is devoid of fathers, or even father figures, such as God the Father.
-How a culture that values fame as if it were a virtue creates a hollowness in it's people
I think most of us here are of like mind, and understand these issues, but I just wanted to lay this all out somewhere, so please forgive my indulgence.
Since we've been again made to defend our Second Amendment rights yet again instead of actually dealing with the matters at hand, how about some appropriate music:
Grand Funk Railroad's "Don't let 'em Take Your Gun" (Produced by Frank Zappa)
Ted Hawkins- The Constitution
Scandalous
According to Vice magazine,
Can you imagine that? Arming women and preachers?
Unfortunately the NRA isn't offering to put guns in their hands. They'd have to provide their own guns. The NRA is just supporting their right not to have to be disarmed and helpless.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before now, I've trained some several women to shoot for such purposes. It often occurs during or shortly after a divorce, when emotions are high on both sides. So far none of them have had to make recourse to their arms for self-defense because, as xkcd reminds us, most people aren't murderers even in moments of high emotion. However, it does sometimes happen that a former spouse tries to kill his ex-wife. It's neither unreasonable nor unwise for a woman in that position to consider arming herself, and I am happy to support it.
Can you imagine that? Arming women and preachers?
Unfortunately the NRA isn't offering to put guns in their hands. They'd have to provide their own guns. The NRA is just supporting their right not to have to be disarmed and helpless.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before now, I've trained some several women to shoot for such purposes. It often occurs during or shortly after a divorce, when emotions are high on both sides. So far none of them have had to make recourse to their arms for self-defense because, as xkcd reminds us, most people aren't murderers even in moments of high emotion. However, it does sometimes happen that a former spouse tries to kill his ex-wife. It's neither unreasonable nor unwise for a woman in that position to consider arming herself, and I am happy to support it.
Would You Believe -Four- Deputies?
Just how many Deputy Sheriffs would it have taken before they got comfortable enough to do their jobs and save the lives of the children dying in front of them? We'll never know, since they apparently waited for a different department to arrive and do the job the deputies would not do.
Asked about corruption in his department, by the way, the Sheriff said, "Lions don't care about the opinions of sheep." He did not explain how he knew anything about the opinions of lions, but we can clearly rule out any direct experience. The article suggests it was from watching Game of Thrones in his leisure hours, which seems much more plausible.
Asked about corruption in his department, by the way, the Sheriff said, "Lions don't care about the opinions of sheep." He did not explain how he knew anything about the opinions of lions, but we can clearly rule out any direct experience. The article suggests it was from watching Game of Thrones in his leisure hours, which seems much more plausible.
A Philosophical Reading of Walls
I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness of this essay on wall-building as fortification technique. It contains at least two insights that are very much worth having:
1) Advances in weapons and advances in defense technology tend to mirror each other,
2) No matter what, defense in depth is necessary.
The relationship in (1) is a little more complex than the author suggests. It's not that advances in walls provoke advances in weapons, but rather that a two-way relationship exists between attack and defense. I drew up a slide to explain this for a conference once.
This was just a sketch of the issue for an academic audience; the more expert audience here will readily identify complexities I didn't bother to draw for them. The basic point is that swords got longer, and then they got shorter. Why? Well, armor got better and better for a while, meaning that it required more force to overcome. A sword is basically a lever, and the longer the lever, the greater the force at the end of the lever. Thus, longer swords.
After the advent of effective gunpowder weapons, however, armor was increasingly less effective and less present. Thus, swords got shorter again. Indeed, to a large degree they were abandoned in favor of the gunpowder weapons. They survive today as combat knives and bayonets, both normally considered last-ditch weapons whose use is preferably to be avoided in most circumstances. There is at least one example of an intentional bayonet charge from the Iraq War, as a way of attacking into an L-shaped ambush, but it isn't a go-to tactic anymore.
To return to the first article, I am impressed with the way the author treats the universals at play in defense. As he notes at the end, the question of the usefulness of walls remains up for debate. "Plato reckoned that walls encourage 'a soft habit of soul in the inhabitants, by inviting them to seek refuge within it instead of repelling the enemy.' Aristotle retorted, that not building walls was 'like desiring the country to be easy to invade.' It’s still an open argument."
1) Advances in weapons and advances in defense technology tend to mirror each other,
2) No matter what, defense in depth is necessary.
The relationship in (1) is a little more complex than the author suggests. It's not that advances in walls provoke advances in weapons, but rather that a two-way relationship exists between attack and defense. I drew up a slide to explain this for a conference once.
This was just a sketch of the issue for an academic audience; the more expert audience here will readily identify complexities I didn't bother to draw for them. The basic point is that swords got longer, and then they got shorter. Why? Well, armor got better and better for a while, meaning that it required more force to overcome. A sword is basically a lever, and the longer the lever, the greater the force at the end of the lever. Thus, longer swords.
After the advent of effective gunpowder weapons, however, armor was increasingly less effective and less present. Thus, swords got shorter again. Indeed, to a large degree they were abandoned in favor of the gunpowder weapons. They survive today as combat knives and bayonets, both normally considered last-ditch weapons whose use is preferably to be avoided in most circumstances. There is at least one example of an intentional bayonet charge from the Iraq War, as a way of attacking into an L-shaped ambush, but it isn't a go-to tactic anymore.
To return to the first article, I am impressed with the way the author treats the universals at play in defense. As he notes at the end, the question of the usefulness of walls remains up for debate. "Plato reckoned that walls encourage 'a soft habit of soul in the inhabitants, by inviting them to seek refuge within it instead of repelling the enemy.' Aristotle retorted, that not building walls was 'like desiring the country to be easy to invade.' It’s still an open argument."
If you don't use a gun, what's the bother about?
I'm gonna predict that the hoopla over the massacre now goes away, if this is true:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The armed school resource officer assigned to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took a defensive position outside the school and did not enter the building while the shooter was killing students and teachers inside with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday.That, I initially supposed, might have been protocol, but if this quote from the sheriff is correct, I guess not.
He said Peterson was armed, and was in uniform, and should have gone into the building during the 6-minute event, which left 17 people, most of them teenagers, dead. When asked what the deputy should have done, Israel said: “Went in and addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”So what we have here, is a cascading failure of institutions. FBI, Sheriff's department, and likely the Federal government, due to the initiative to reduce minority teenage incarceration, the so called "school to prison pipeline" 39 visits from the cops, not a single arrest? I'm not even going to discuss the FBI, since that organization probably just needs to be disbanded at this point.
And Just Like That, The Story Changed
An officer was on the scene of last week's shooting. He hid.
But by all means, let's all disarm and trust the government to protect us and our children.
But by all means, let's all disarm and trust the government to protect us and our children.
A Critique of Liberalism
This book review is encouraging that the book is worth reading; the review itself goes further than the book, into a criticism of liberalism (both classical and reform) as contrasted with Christianity. If you find the Christian account too strong, the book is probably more to your tastes. If you find the account compelling, the review will have pleased you and the book may still be of interest.
Appreciating Philosophy Degrees
An argument from Mark Cuban that such degrees will soon be worth more than computer science degrees. Advise your children accordingly.
Bee Stings
U.S.—Despite offering thousands of thoughts and prayers to the victims of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s latest flurry of moronic tweets, the nation’s religious people admitted at long last that their petitions were totally ineffective at preventing the pop astrophysicist from saying stupid things online. ...
How Woke Are You? Take the Quiz!
For this last, the headline says about 90% of it, but I just couldn't leave it out:
Federal Government Launches GoFundMe Campaign To Pay Off $20 Trillion National Debt
Also Applies to Guns
A cartoon from xkcd implies a point that the author may or may not have intended to make.
Cross Picking
Jim Heath of the Reverend Horton Heat shows another way in which bluegrass techniques influenced rock and roll.
Graphs and Statistics
The opening graph is interesting, but it's quickly criticized in the comments for selection bias. So defenders produce other graphs -- quite a few of them -- with supporting stories.
What to believe? Well, this is one way of addressing the question.
What to believe? Well, this is one way of addressing the question.
This Law is Unjust
The law that the Special Counsel has been using to obtain guilty pleas needs to be changed. It is inhumane in the most literal sense: it is not a law that a human can be expected to obey no matter how hard that human being tries.
This law gives prosecutors incredible power, because simply by compelling testimony they can compel crimes. The only way to avoid being made into a criminal is to refuse to testify. Congress should alter this law at once to include an intent standard, so that the prosecution must prove that the intent of the accused was to deceive. If so, fine, prosecute him. An inhumane law is unjust, however, and unjust laws should be repealed or altered.
He lied when he said his last communication with Rick Gates was in August 2016, according to the government, when in fact in September 2016 'he spoke with both [Manafort deputy Rick] Gates and Person A' about a report and 'surreptitiously recorded the calls.'Maybe this guy "lied" in the strict sense, intending to deceive the investigation. However, there is no possibility that I could accurately remember whether any conversation I had last fall was in August or September, let alone a conversation from a year before that. I could not expect to tell you accurately whether or not a particular conversation was the last time I had discussed it with the person I was talking to a year or more ago. The law treats any statement that turns out to be inaccurate as if it were a deliberate effort to deceive. But the human mind doesn't work that way. Every time you remember something, your brain alters the memory a bit. It is not a recording device like a video camera or a tape recorder; it is simply not reasonable to expect someone to remember details with perfect accuracy.
This law gives prosecutors incredible power, because simply by compelling testimony they can compel crimes. The only way to avoid being made into a criminal is to refuse to testify. Congress should alter this law at once to include an intent standard, so that the prosecution must prove that the intent of the accused was to deceive. If so, fine, prosecute him. An inhumane law is unjust, however, and unjust laws should be repealed or altered.
The fuel of rage
Empty private lives can make for inappropriately violent public ones. I was struck by this comment from David Foster in a comment at his site, Chicago Boyz:
Early voting starts tomorrow in my local county race. In trying to find out what my potential constituents want from their county government, I've been confused more than one by people who seem furious that no one is helping them, but even angrier if they are directed to volunteer aid groups, because "they don't want a handout." Others, or maybe the same people (it's slippery, what they're so angry about), are aggrieved because they're able to recover from the storm but the county won't crack down on those other guys, who leave their debris everywhere and didn't obey building codes in the first place. Everyone wants the government to be more "accountable," but for some that seems to mean "make them cough up the recovery money we're sure they're hiding" while for others it means "punish them for being lax in law enforcement and wasting our tax money on handouts."
It makes me wonder if the key to the contradictions is the meaninglessness of private lives and the consequent need to gin up intense emotion in the public sphere. The people who got together with their neighbors to help the hardest hit and make the best of things seem to be recovering just fine, even though our local economy is still barely functioning and it remains hard to get insurance money or, if you can get the money, any contractors worth their salt who aren't too busy to start work. The people who are still fuming with anger appear paralyzed and rootless.
The worst-struck neighborhoods have no obvious home-grown structure: no churches, clubs, or community clean-up parties. Part of it may be that these neighborhoods have too high a percentage of second homes and, even after six months, absentee owners. Another part may be that over half of the homes in these areas were badly damaged, and that's too high a percentage for the rest to come together as a healing network. When these people ask me what I'd do for them as a commissioner, I have no answer. Can a government ever make up for a lack of local community? I think governments do well simply to avoid the temptation to disrupt what local communities can do for themselves.
"I believe we have today in America a considerable number of people who expect to have . . . maybe not the *entire* content of their lives, but a significant and emotionally-intense portion . . . delivered by the public sphere. And it is these people who are most likely to commit political violence."I won't quote the whole comment, which includes fascinating excerpts from Sebastian Haffner’s memoir of life in Germany between the wars. In that period, when things began to improve, some parts of society seemed even more determined to find something wrong to be volcanically and violently opposed to--and they got their way before long.
Early voting starts tomorrow in my local county race. In trying to find out what my potential constituents want from their county government, I've been confused more than one by people who seem furious that no one is helping them, but even angrier if they are directed to volunteer aid groups, because "they don't want a handout." Others, or maybe the same people (it's slippery, what they're so angry about), are aggrieved because they're able to recover from the storm but the county won't crack down on those other guys, who leave their debris everywhere and didn't obey building codes in the first place. Everyone wants the government to be more "accountable," but for some that seems to mean "make them cough up the recovery money we're sure they're hiding" while for others it means "punish them for being lax in law enforcement and wasting our tax money on handouts."
It makes me wonder if the key to the contradictions is the meaninglessness of private lives and the consequent need to gin up intense emotion in the public sphere. The people who got together with their neighbors to help the hardest hit and make the best of things seem to be recovering just fine, even though our local economy is still barely functioning and it remains hard to get insurance money or, if you can get the money, any contractors worth their salt who aren't too busy to start work. The people who are still fuming with anger appear paralyzed and rootless.
The worst-struck neighborhoods have no obvious home-grown structure: no churches, clubs, or community clean-up parties. Part of it may be that these neighborhoods have too high a percentage of second homes and, even after six months, absentee owners. Another part may be that over half of the homes in these areas were badly damaged, and that's too high a percentage for the rest to come together as a healing network. When these people ask me what I'd do for them as a commissioner, I have no answer. Can a government ever make up for a lack of local community? I think governments do well simply to avoid the temptation to disrupt what local communities can do for themselves.
Geese and ganders
What would happen if we seriously tried to apply Robert Mueller's legal analysis to everyone who was active in the 2016 election?
Arthur the Centurion
An implausible theory, says the Spectator. But the border country hosting it certainly has an interesting history.
The debatable land in question is the thin wedge of territory between England and Scotland on the west coast which, for a period in the late Middle Ages, was officially declared as lawless by the parliaments of each country. The resulting piece of English legislation contains a quite magnificent disclaimer:It's these Border Country folk who later, following an adventure in the Stewart plantationing of Ulster, become the "Scots-Irish" so momentous in American history.All Englishmen and Scottishmen are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy, all and every such person and persons, their bodies, property, goods and livestock… without any redress to be made for same.As Robb comments dryly, ‘by all accounts they availed themselves of the privilege’.
My husband's work
My husband, as I may have mentioned, spends much of his time working on Civil War games, the old-fashioned kind with paper maps and cardboard counters. I don't often understand a great deal of what goes into one of these things, so I enjoyed reading this interview with the fellow he works most closely with. As the article points out, the author tried to get an interview with Greg but was referred to his developer, Bill. Greg's clear message was, "I don't do interviews." Luckily Bill gives a great interview and understands the game design process inside and out. Bill is an interesting guy, who has come and stayed with us here twice. He and Greg stay in close contact by phone and email.
The Year of the Dog
My father was born in the Year of the Dog. He would have been 72. The Chinese cycle is 12 years long, so when it's your year, your age will be divisible by 12 that year.
I am a Tiger, myself.
Not Doing This "Debate" Today
I think we've all made up our mind about gun control, mass shootings, etc. I haven't got anything new to say on the subject, and there's no reason to repeat myself when 15 years of previous responses are available in the archives. Only tyrannies disarm their populations. Free men are the best defense of a free state. You get bad things sometimes in both free states and tyrannies, but the bad things in tyrannies are worse; and the freedom is worth defending for its own sake. I won't stop believing any of that.
Also, though, I realized as I saw this debate spiraling up again last night that the fight is really over. We won.
There are only 8 states that are not 'shall-issue' states for concealed carry permits. That means there are 42 states whose legislatures believe that the right to keep and bear arms must be respected, barring a clear and obvious disability such as a felony conviction or involuntary hospitalization for mental health reasons. It takes only 34 states to call a Constitutional Convention, and only 38 to ratify new Constitutional amendments proposed by such a convention.
They don't realize it who live in coastal enclaves, but they've lost this fight. Even if they should manage to pass a restrictive Federal law, there are enough state legislatures out there simply to remove the issue from Federal authority. "No law shall be passed by Congress respecting the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms; no Federal agency may regulate the possession of arms by citizens. All such authority is reserved to the states, or to the People."
Also, though, I realized as I saw this debate spiraling up again last night that the fight is really over. We won.
There are only 8 states that are not 'shall-issue' states for concealed carry permits. That means there are 42 states whose legislatures believe that the right to keep and bear arms must be respected, barring a clear and obvious disability such as a felony conviction or involuntary hospitalization for mental health reasons. It takes only 34 states to call a Constitutional Convention, and only 38 to ratify new Constitutional amendments proposed by such a convention.
They don't realize it who live in coastal enclaves, but they've lost this fight. Even if they should manage to pass a restrictive Federal law, there are enough state legislatures out there simply to remove the issue from Federal authority. "No law shall be passed by Congress respecting the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms; no Federal agency may regulate the possession of arms by citizens. All such authority is reserved to the states, or to the People."
The best presidential poll
Scott ("Dilbert") Adams argued last month that President Trump enjoys the highest presidential rating ever, using small-business optimism as a proxy:
Big businesses can do fine with a president who promotes policies that favor big corporations, even if the rest of the country is suffering. But when small business owners are feeling good about the economy, that means the president is doing a more bottoms-up job of getting things right. President Trump has focused on bottoms-up economics from the start, meaning jobs and lessened regulations. Apparently that is working.
Louder for the people in the back
Stolen shamelessly from Ace:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2018/02/12/fisking-the-stop-telling-poor-people-to-cook-doofus-with-special-guest-my-mom/
In the article, Larry Correia (sci-fi author and pretty nice guy in person according to people I know) savagely fisks an idiot "social justice reporter" who sneers at the idea that poor people can save money and eat healthier by cooking rather than eating fast food. Larry (quite correctly) points out that it is staggeringly obvious that this reporter has neither ever been truly poor, nor ever really had to shop in stores like Dollar General or Buy Lots (nor likely, in my opinion, would be caught dead doing so).
When I was a kid, my parents were wealthier by a good deal than my father's parents ever were, but never were sure they could afford to put shoes on all four of their children at the same time. Fast food was a rare treat, and yet they still managed to cook meals every night of my life. Why? Because that was how you fed a family of six without much money. Had they fed us fast food every night, I'm sure that they wouldn't have been able to afford shoes for us.
Personally, I'll admit, for many years I didn't want to come home after a long day's work and cook dinner, and I fully confess that it was a poor economic choice. I have since mended my ways and my meager bank account shows the benefits of doing so. And Larry is dead on, one doesn't need a full spice rack or vast array of utensils and pans in which to fix a good meal. Most of my cooking is done out of my favorite skillet and using a single knife and cutting board. And while I have a nice skillet, knife, and cutting board, I could go out to Walmart right now and purchase replacements for less than $20 (I just looked it up on the Walmart website). That's the same cost as a two-four person dinner at most every fast food place. So, as Larry suggested, skip a meal at KFC and have bologna sandwiches that night, and suddenly you can afford all to tools you need to cook (and yes, you can absolutely brown ground beef with no utensil other than a fork, I have done it myself).
http://monsterhunternation.com/2018/02/12/fisking-the-stop-telling-poor-people-to-cook-doofus-with-special-guest-my-mom/
In the article, Larry Correia (sci-fi author and pretty nice guy in person according to people I know) savagely fisks an idiot "social justice reporter" who sneers at the idea that poor people can save money and eat healthier by cooking rather than eating fast food. Larry (quite correctly) points out that it is staggeringly obvious that this reporter has neither ever been truly poor, nor ever really had to shop in stores like Dollar General or Buy Lots (nor likely, in my opinion, would be caught dead doing so).
When I was a kid, my parents were wealthier by a good deal than my father's parents ever were, but never were sure they could afford to put shoes on all four of their children at the same time. Fast food was a rare treat, and yet they still managed to cook meals every night of my life. Why? Because that was how you fed a family of six without much money. Had they fed us fast food every night, I'm sure that they wouldn't have been able to afford shoes for us.
Personally, I'll admit, for many years I didn't want to come home after a long day's work and cook dinner, and I fully confess that it was a poor economic choice. I have since mended my ways and my meager bank account shows the benefits of doing so. And Larry is dead on, one doesn't need a full spice rack or vast array of utensils and pans in which to fix a good meal. Most of my cooking is done out of my favorite skillet and using a single knife and cutting board. And while I have a nice skillet, knife, and cutting board, I could go out to Walmart right now and purchase replacements for less than $20 (I just looked it up on the Walmart website). That's the same cost as a two-four person dinner at most every fast food place. So, as Larry suggested, skip a meal at KFC and have bologna sandwiches that night, and suddenly you can afford all to tools you need to cook (and yes, you can absolutely brown ground beef with no utensil other than a fork, I have done it myself).
Cascade Music
Waylon Jennings had the sound. The cascade is a bluegrass technique, though, made famous by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Here's a guy who has the sense of it.
So now that you know what to look for, here are the masters.
Unfortunately, the most famous incarnation is this tune. It was composed by the masters, but ended up in a stereotype that suggested this wasn't a high form of art. It was supposed to be something some simple-minded genetic defect could do without effort.
I met James Dickey once, long ago when I was young. He was a night fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater in World War II. For that cause I will forgive him everything, even this, but bear in mind that it was a significant slander.
Watch Earl Scruggs do "Foggy Mountain," years later, with the young men and children he's taught to follow in his footsteps. He gives about 42 seconds of embarrassed introduction. You can skip it, if you don't want to hear what it meant to him to find students who really cared about his art.
Good question
Is “budget” the right word when the plan is to spend all the money and then some, forever?
The Army Gets Back to Basics
Following a survey of commanders, the Army is re-instituting some traditional features in Basic.
The Media Loves North Korea
This is a simple product of hatred for the Trump administration, I suppose, but it has led to glowing coverage for the most tyrannical regime on earth. The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and NBC are the leading contenders for the dishonor of most devout praise.
Jeff Jacoby provides some needed bracing. Uncle Jimbo, too. Get it together, American press. The DPRK's leadership are totalitarian monsters.
Jeff Jacoby provides some needed bracing. Uncle Jimbo, too. Get it together, American press. The DPRK's leadership are totalitarian monsters.
Communists are the Best Catholics?
Last week we heard that the Vatican had decided to allow the Communists to appoint bishops. This week, we get these statements:
“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese,” a senior Vatican official has said.The Decree Against Communism is still in effect, but the drift in the direction of renouncing it seems pronounced of late.
Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, praised the Communist state as “extraordinary”, saying: “You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.
The bishop told the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that in China “the economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”... [he] said that, as opposed to those who follow “liberal thought”, the Chinese are working for the greater good of the planet.
First Things on the Alt-Right and Christianity
An interesting exploration of the philosophy behind the so-called 'alt-right.' Philosophy is an ancient discipline, and there is always more to know.
Organized Crime?
The Teamsters Union gets set to fight US immigration agents. Mostly this is within the law -- they're training to know their maximal rights in resisting warrants of various kinds -- but these numbers are striking. (Not the Teamsters. The Teamsters are not striking.)
And it sounds as if the law is itself a part of the conspiracy to avoid enforcement: "Employers also have the right to three days’ notice if the feds instigate what’s known as an I-9 probe — basically, a review of employees’ working papers, Cortés said."
[T]he organization — which covers a variety of fields, including airlines, truckers, dairy farmers and more — also has a sizable share of immigrant workers, roughly a third, 40,000.Surely this is an indication that the third of Teamsters who are immigrants includes a lot of unlawful immigrants? How far can the union go in organized efforts to prevent enforcement of the law before it is a criminal conspiracy to aid and abet the violation of immigration laws? Lawyers among you are invited to reply. I assume that legal rights are legal rights no matter what, but this seems like a clear-cut case of trying to (as they say on the Left) 'obstruct justice.' I suppose it's legal to obstruct justice as long as you do no more than insist upon your rights.
After what happened to Garcia — one of many recent forced deportations — worry ran through Teamster shops, Miranda said....
Spinelli paid particular attention because many of his members — immigrants who work at a Long Island dairy farm — were profoundly shaken when federal agents raided nearly 100 7-Eleven stores last month in a search for undocumented workers.
“We deliver all the dairy to all the 7-Eleven stores in the city — you can imagine how scared some of these guys are,” he said.
And it sounds as if the law is itself a part of the conspiracy to avoid enforcement: "Employers also have the right to three days’ notice if the feds instigate what’s known as an I-9 probe — basically, a review of employees’ working papers, Cortés said."
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