A meditation on weakness as a relative state, and what can be done about that. What can be done, the author argues, is to carry a weapon. For many, the only weapon that equalizes is a handgun.
The foil here is Henry Rollins, a man of some good and some bad ideas. His devotion to personal strength as a source of self-actualization is worth hearing out. He wrote it down once, as a motivational speech, and here it is performed by someone else:
It turns out the argument isn't as simple as 'strong is better than weak.' The two authors have the same concerns. They are both concerned about attaining independence, overcoming fear, and being your own person in spite of others' violence and intimidation.
These are both the tools of equality, guns and weights. They are both ways of attaining different kinds of equality. The gun can make the small person equally capable of violence as the big one, and thus autonomous because they can no longer be pushed around. The weights bring autonomy by helping you to maximize your internal potential, which brings with it the confidence that you can survive and overcome challenges. It also brings a lot of practical independence: growing stronger makes you capable of carrying your own problems in very many ways.
My recommendation is to pursue both things.
'Bear arms, but also bare arms.'
Individuation
Does being an independent human being, or even nation, make it easier or harder to get along with neighbors? Arguing in Harper's, French novelist Michel Houellebecq
stirs up the chattering class by suggesting that Trump's nationalism is a good thing:
Nationalists can talk to one another; with internationalists, oddly enough, talking doesn’t work so well.
That's what I call a mentor
They have got to be kidding me.
I'll bet these guys could solve a little problem like an under-26 student who needs better health insurance.
Honestly, it sounds like the more fevered variety of spy thriller novel.
I'll bet these guys could solve a little problem like an under-26 student who needs better health insurance.
Honestly, it sounds like the more fevered variety of spy thriller novel.
The right to choose
A super-liberal friend called in distress yesterday. Her husband abruptly left the job that has supplied her family with employer-based health insurance for years--but no problem, right? She can just sign herself and her post-college under 26 son up for Obamacare coverage. (Yeah, I know, unconstitutional, but we'll get to that later.) Was I aware that the sign-up procedures are arcane, the choices are expensive and substantively awful, the subsidies are illusory, the deadline is tomorrow? Her son is in post-grad school in another state; all the options for a single plan for the two of them are limited to a single state, there are few choices left in the "market." How can this be?
Why, yes. You may recall my anguish of several years ago, which frankly you showed little understanding of at the time. And if I'm not mistaken, you still support the party that brought you this policy and hundreds of others cut from the same deranged cloth. (But . . . Trump! Also, did you know that Republicans commit voting infractions, and indulge in gerrymandering?)
We talked for a long time about the few, bad options she had for making the most of this crisis. I found myself continually erupting in fury over how bad the individual market had become. Yes, I know it's bad! What have I been telling you! My friend had remained fundamentally unaware of it in two ways: by ignoring my experience--who wants to talk about ugly things?--and by enjoying employer-based coverage, which was supposed to be gutted by Obamacare, but Congress made the correct political calculation that it should infinitely delay the effective date of the benign new system for employer-based insurance, which is to say most voters. Congratulations: you have joined the ranks of the 3-5 million Americans who are self-employed or who retired before Medicare age. Congress didn't delay the effective date for you suckers. You are such a small voting bloc that you don't matter, and you will find that your friends, especially the progressive ones, have no idea what's happening to you in this dilemma and care less.
There is a terrible temptation to schadenfreude, which I fight off for one minute and fall into the next. This is a real human being I care about, and I don't want to enjoy her distress. At the same time I am incandescently angry that she is still retreating into banalities about the need for "society" to solve its problem of "cruelty," like that terrible man who's separating babies from their mothers at the border, or people who oppose a woman's right to choose--actually arrogating to themselves the right to make moral choices for others! And everything would be fine if we just had free health care, as the sensible humane countries do.
I'm afraid I unloaded on her. Well, at least after all these years I found the courage to tell her I was very, very angry with her for continuing to support the social policies that ripped such a scary hole in our lives and which, as far as I'm concerned, lead inevitably to eating zoo animals in the name of compassion. (Oh, yes, that's awful, isn't it? If only we could solve the problems of cruelty with better education.) At the same time, I know she supports horrible policies without malice. She is not someone who can think through the practical impact of a government solution. She wants one that feels compassionate, not one that demonstrably improves the evils she worries about. She is an artist, a good one, and she simply does not approach the world that way.
I found myself telling my friend to write a check to a real human being in need, with her own money. I'll give her credit: she was more grieved than huffy. She found a sudden need to get off the phone and deal with a car repairman, but I know she'll call back and try to mend fences. At least the air of stifling unreality that had crept over our recent conversations lifted a bit. Being angry with your oldest friend is not a good thing, but hiding it doesn't help. It only makes your heart go dead, and makes you want to start ducking your friend's calls.
Why, yes. You may recall my anguish of several years ago, which frankly you showed little understanding of at the time. And if I'm not mistaken, you still support the party that brought you this policy and hundreds of others cut from the same deranged cloth. (But . . . Trump! Also, did you know that Republicans commit voting infractions, and indulge in gerrymandering?)
We talked for a long time about the few, bad options she had for making the most of this crisis. I found myself continually erupting in fury over how bad the individual market had become. Yes, I know it's bad! What have I been telling you! My friend had remained fundamentally unaware of it in two ways: by ignoring my experience--who wants to talk about ugly things?--and by enjoying employer-based coverage, which was supposed to be gutted by Obamacare, but Congress made the correct political calculation that it should infinitely delay the effective date of the benign new system for employer-based insurance, which is to say most voters. Congratulations: you have joined the ranks of the 3-5 million Americans who are self-employed or who retired before Medicare age. Congress didn't delay the effective date for you suckers. You are such a small voting bloc that you don't matter, and you will find that your friends, especially the progressive ones, have no idea what's happening to you in this dilemma and care less.
There is a terrible temptation to schadenfreude, which I fight off for one minute and fall into the next. This is a real human being I care about, and I don't want to enjoy her distress. At the same time I am incandescently angry that she is still retreating into banalities about the need for "society" to solve its problem of "cruelty," like that terrible man who's separating babies from their mothers at the border, or people who oppose a woman's right to choose--actually arrogating to themselves the right to make moral choices for others! And everything would be fine if we just had free health care, as the sensible humane countries do.
I'm afraid I unloaded on her. Well, at least after all these years I found the courage to tell her I was very, very angry with her for continuing to support the social policies that ripped such a scary hole in our lives and which, as far as I'm concerned, lead inevitably to eating zoo animals in the name of compassion. (Oh, yes, that's awful, isn't it? If only we could solve the problems of cruelty with better education.) At the same time, I know she supports horrible policies without malice. She is not someone who can think through the practical impact of a government solution. She wants one that feels compassionate, not one that demonstrably improves the evils she worries about. She is an artist, a good one, and she simply does not approach the world that way.
I found myself telling my friend to write a check to a real human being in need, with her own money. I'll give her credit: she was more grieved than huffy. She found a sudden need to get off the phone and deal with a car repairman, but I know she'll call back and try to mend fences. At least the air of stifling unreality that had crept over our recent conversations lifted a bit. Being angry with your oldest friend is not a good thing, but hiding it doesn't help. It only makes your heart go dead, and makes you want to start ducking your friend's calls.
OBAMACARE DEAD
"Oh, What a Day! What a Lovely Day!"
UPDATE: Bwhahahaha
Nothing has been more destructive to my family's finances than this stupid law. I lost the plan they promised I could keep, and then lost the plans I got instead four or five times. It's increased our health care expenses by fivefold, while largely eliminating non-emergency use of services because we spend so much on the premiums that we can't afford the sky-high deductibles. Last year I spent more money on health insurance than on any other thing: more than my mortgage, more even than taxes. We can't use it, because we've already spent so much on the premiums; and if we do end up in an emergency room, that's all going to be out of pocket anyway.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The Old Swedish Spirit
A professor of chemistry at Lund University got a message from one of her students, who was visiting his home in the Middle East, that he might not make it back to class because ISIS had taken his village.
Upset that one of her students was threatened in this way, she dispatched a team of mercenaries to rescue him and his family.
Now we're talking.
Upset that one of her students was threatened in this way, she dispatched a team of mercenaries to rescue him and his family.
Now we're talking.
Mark Steyn on Progress
It's too long to excerpt, but it won't take you long to read. It does sound like significant progress has been made in New Jersey, assuming that "progress" is simply a synonym for "change."
BB: Oscars Committee Names New Host: Jordan Peterson
“None of us here at the Academy have ever heard of Dr. Peterson, but judging by sheer number of books he sells, coupled with his popularity as a professor and speaker, we felt that he would be the perfect candidate,” AMPAS revealed in a press release Wednesday. “Plus, we have been informed that Dr. Peterson is a thought leader on the cutting edge of social issues such as intersectionality, patriarchy, transgenderism, white privilege, and socialism, making him an outstanding choice.”
The End of the Boy Scouts of America
They've largely succeeded in destroying one of the formative institutions of my youth.
It was one of two moments in my life when I felt the most patriotic, the other one coming many years later under fire in Iraq. I was there, I don't doubt in part, because of the impact made on me by the Boy Scout Handbook of my era. "Be always ready with your armor on," it said without irony, and, "Maintain the honor of your country with your life."
Somewhere between then and now, a lot of people decided to change the Boy Scouts from what it was to what it is. It looks likely to die of what has been done to it. With it will pass away one of the glories of my youth, one of the last institutions that shaped young men to seek high things like honor, duty, love of America, and the strength and skill to walk the Wild.
The Boy Scouts of America is considering declaring bankruptcy, according to a Wall Street Journal report.I remember going to a state-level jamboree when I was ten or eleven, and being struck by all the Americana of the thing. There were hundreds of other boys in uniforms with American flags on the shoulders, and all sorts of knots and woodcraft, and the smell of pine wood fires by day and night. There was an astronaut who came not just to speak but to spend the day wandering around and meeting the boys, giving us a sense of what we as Americans might aspire to do if we worked hard. There were fireworks one night, and patriotic music.
The Wednesday report comes in the wake of sinking membership and multiple controversies surrounding the 108-year-old organization, including sex abuse allegations and its controversial decision to change its program name from Boy Scouts to Scouts BSA and allow girls into that program....
As the organization has made decisions deemed to be more inclusive, such as allowing openly gay scouts in 2013 and scoutmasters in 2015 as well as the 2018 decision to allow girls, membership has continued to decline sharply, from over 4 million members at its peak to a claimed 2.3 million members at present.... Those numbers will likely continue to decline....
Additionally, the Boy Scouts have come under criticism of late for keeping records of sex abuse perpetrated by scoutmasters — called the “perversion files” — under wraps for decades instead of revealing them to the public.
It was one of two moments in my life when I felt the most patriotic, the other one coming many years later under fire in Iraq. I was there, I don't doubt in part, because of the impact made on me by the Boy Scout Handbook of my era. "Be always ready with your armor on," it said without irony, and, "Maintain the honor of your country with your life."
Somewhere between then and now, a lot of people decided to change the Boy Scouts from what it was to what it is. It looks likely to die of what has been done to it. With it will pass away one of the glories of my youth, one of the last institutions that shaped young men to seek high things like honor, duty, love of America, and the strength and skill to walk the Wild.
Speaking of Foreign Agents....
The problem with suddenly enforcing a long-unenforced law is that lots of people have been ignoring it. You may end up catching the very people you had hoped to help out.
A Few Pieces on General Flynn
I admired now-retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn during his time running intelligence in Afghanistan. I was thus really saddened to see both his failure to reform DIA, and the harm to his career it caused; but I was really sad to see him arrested and charged with being a foreign agent. The idea was that he was somehow involved in a quasi-treasonous conspiracy with the Russians.
Well, that turned out to be only sort-of true. The foreign government he was working for turned out to be not Russia but NATO ally Turkey; and the charge isn't so much that he was a spy as that he didn't file the right paperwork to lobby for a foreign government. Also, until that day the law had not been prosecuted as a rule; you just were required to go back and fill out the forms. The law was really on the books, even if it was unenforced, but it was a little unfair to make a special exception for this one guy -- especially in light of his history of genuinely excellent service in Afghanistan.
And then it turned out that the original frame was based on the Logan Act, that unconstitutional piece of nonsense that went unenforced for two centuries -- in spite of far grander and more obvious violations, by people who went on to become Senators and Secretaries of State.
So, at some point my sadness at Flynn's tragic downfall began to alter to a suspicion that he wasn't being fairly treated.
There is some new evidence coming to light now that makes clear that he really, really was not fairly treated. Even the scoundrels in the Mueller investigation have finally asked that he receive no jail time, perhaps in part out of a sense of guilt about what they've done to the man. Perhaps he should have known not to trust the FBI when they told him to meet with them without a lawyer; perhaps he should have known that he was subject to legal penalties for lying to them even if they characterized the meeting as a 'visit' rather than an 'interview,' and even if they didn't warn him about his liability. But he can't be held responsible for the fact that the FBI agents' conclusion that he was being open and forthcoming would be painted as 'lying,' or that he'd be forced by debt and massive overcharges to plead guilty to a crime that he plainly did not commit.
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial calling it entrapment. Sarah Carter has a story that says that the FBI mishandled evidence and rewrote the material statements about the interview months later. James Comey admitted that he took steps in the 'investigation' that were not standard.
The judge in the case has, a year after the guilty plea and at the sentencing hearing, suddenly had to demand that all exculpatory information be revealed to him by the prosecution.
I'm starting to think that the wrong man is in danger of prison time.
UPDATE: I'm going to forward one more just because I love the title: "James and the Giant Impeachment."
Well, that turned out to be only sort-of true. The foreign government he was working for turned out to be not Russia but NATO ally Turkey; and the charge isn't so much that he was a spy as that he didn't file the right paperwork to lobby for a foreign government. Also, until that day the law had not been prosecuted as a rule; you just were required to go back and fill out the forms. The law was really on the books, even if it was unenforced, but it was a little unfair to make a special exception for this one guy -- especially in light of his history of genuinely excellent service in Afghanistan.
And then it turned out that the original frame was based on the Logan Act, that unconstitutional piece of nonsense that went unenforced for two centuries -- in spite of far grander and more obvious violations, by people who went on to become Senators and Secretaries of State.
So, at some point my sadness at Flynn's tragic downfall began to alter to a suspicion that he wasn't being fairly treated.
There is some new evidence coming to light now that makes clear that he really, really was not fairly treated. Even the scoundrels in the Mueller investigation have finally asked that he receive no jail time, perhaps in part out of a sense of guilt about what they've done to the man. Perhaps he should have known not to trust the FBI when they told him to meet with them without a lawyer; perhaps he should have known that he was subject to legal penalties for lying to them even if they characterized the meeting as a 'visit' rather than an 'interview,' and even if they didn't warn him about his liability. But he can't be held responsible for the fact that the FBI agents' conclusion that he was being open and forthcoming would be painted as 'lying,' or that he'd be forced by debt and massive overcharges to plead guilty to a crime that he plainly did not commit.
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial calling it entrapment. Sarah Carter has a story that says that the FBI mishandled evidence and rewrote the material statements about the interview months later. James Comey admitted that he took steps in the 'investigation' that were not standard.
The judge in the case has, a year after the guilty plea and at the sentencing hearing, suddenly had to demand that all exculpatory information be revealed to him by the prosecution.
I'm starting to think that the wrong man is in danger of prison time.
UPDATE: I'm going to forward one more just because I love the title: "James and the Giant Impeachment."
Appreciation
Sorry I have not been posting as much lately, but I have greatly appreciated all the posts from my co-bloggers. It's nice to feel the sense of community, and even if I haven't got something to say on a given day, I look forward to hearing from each of you. The comments, also, are a daily source of pleasure and a sense of camaraderie for me.
Thank you all for being a part of what we do here.
Thank you all for being a part of what we do here.
Aircraft thrillers
Every day lately Maggie's Farm has been posting YouTube clips on aircraft emergencies, usually just audio, with some kind of filler or computer-generated graphics for the video. This morning's is really worth listening to, an 80-year-old newly bereaved widow who manages to put the family plane down after her husband suffers a heart attack at the controls.
She flew all the time with her husband and had had some rudimentary pilot training decades earlier. She sounds remarkably calm. Although there's a little more chaos on the radio than is ideal, and she often doesn't acknowledge and repeat the instructions she gets, everyone (including herself) does a great job getting her down. How I love these rescue stories, with total strangers dropping everything to engage in an act of brotherly love.
Hoping to find an online account told from her point of view, I discovered only her obituary from three years later.
She flew all the time with her husband and had had some rudimentary pilot training decades earlier. She sounds remarkably calm. Although there's a little more chaos on the radio than is ideal, and she often doesn't acknowledge and repeat the instructions she gets, everyone (including herself) does a great job getting her down. How I love these rescue stories, with total strangers dropping everything to engage in an act of brotherly love.
Hoping to find an online account told from her point of view, I discovered only her obituary from three years later.
On the Gilets Jaunes
Two interesting articles on the current French revolt by the Yellow Vests, apparently another front in the rural-urban cold war. In some ways, their descriptions remind me of the Tea Party movement here, but in others, not. These are longish articles and I'm just quoting some interesting bits from them below the fold.
Peter Berkowitz: What the New Congress Can Learn from Aristotle
Dr. Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution at Stanford has a good article on the relevance of Aristotle's political philosophy to American government today. It's a good read, I thought. Here's a snippet:
Many on both sides take pride in assuming the worst about the opposition. The left bewails the onset of fascism in America. Yet Republicans have reduced the scope of government by cutting taxes and deregulating the economy. And rather than imposing American rule beyond the nation’s borders, the president and his party have sought to bring immigration under the rule of law.
The right adopts a siege mentality and girds itself for total war against the left even though in 2019 the GOP will still control the presidency, the Senate, 26 governorships, and 62 of 97 state legislative chambers ...
The routine exaggeration, the reflexive resorting to sloganeering and invective, and the determined refusal to countenance alternative opinions leave partisans imprisoned within their cherished clichés and mesmerized by their pet panaceas. What is needed is a larger perspective, a suppler outlook, a more capacious sensibility.
What is needed is a generous dose of Aristotelian political science.
But doesn’t Aristotle, writing in the twilight of classical Athenian greatness, proceed from a discredited conception of nature and human nature? Doesn’t he subscribe to the illiberal and antidemocratic view that the purpose of politics is to cultivate virtue, a task to which only the one best regime is suited? Doesn’t his defense of natural slavery and his subordination of women render his thinking offensive to contemporary sensibilities and irrelevant to contemporary politics?
Such questions provide an excellent introduction to Aristotle’s political science ...
Rendezvous with destiny
We watched "The 15:17 to Paris" this week, Clint Eastwood's movie about three American servicemen who foiled a 2015 terrorist attack on a French train. I'm enjoying remembering watching it more than I did actually experiencing it.
Eastwood made a controversial decision to cast the three servicemen as themselves. The acting, therefore, is a bit amateurish and flat, matched by the screenplay and directorial style. "Lawrence of Arabia" or "A Man for All Seasons," it's not, but the effect is charming nevertheless. The three young men are completely ordinary in an old-fashioned way, fellows of average ability and unremarkable upbringing. The main focus is on the formative experiences of Spencer Stone, the guy who physically tackled the gun- and knife-wielding terrorist, from his mildly disappointing interactions with an unsympathetic education system, to his mother's disgust at the suggestion that he take drugs to keep him from looking out the window during boring classes, his impulsive decision to get into shape in order to qualify for a pararescue career in the military, and his sharp disappointment at failing to qualify for his first choice of service.
In another movie, all these experiences would show how society failed a young man and led him down a path of anomie and drug use, or spurred him to cure cancer in defiance of his small-minded critics. Instead, Spencer fumes over his disappointments, but continues along the military paths that remain open to him, picking up tools and experiences here and there, showing mild sparks of courage and independence, and finally making the fateful decision to board the 15:17 train to Paris with his two childhood friends, now also in the service and also on leave.
The attack itself is not terribly dramatic, considering the potential for horrible injury and death. It's over fairly quickly. The heroes have a bit of luck. The former would-be pararescuer calls on his physical strength, his jiu jitsu training, and a bit of first-aid education to stop the bad guy and help the injured train passenger. All three take care of business briskly; the main character is awarded the Legion of Honor.
Mediocre critical reviews correctly noted the flat tone of the film. What I enjoyed was the non-drama. This was not the "They Jacked with the Wrong Guy" genre, one I particularly enjoy, in which the crisis happens to someone who is fatally underestimated by the villains, like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard." The Everyman hero in "The 15:17 to Paris" made something modest of his modest circumstances, which fitted him to step up and do the right thing in a moment of unexpected crisis. He made few demands on life, concentrating instead on choosing something appropriate from the opportunities that randomly presented themselves to him and putting a reasonable effort into forming himself to meet them, without either whining or self-aggrandizing. He apparently assumed that many of the things he tried to learn in the service had been dead ends or wasted effort, but they all came in handy when he disarmed the bad guy on the train and helped the injured guy until EMTs could arrive.
Spencer remained cheerful and open to both fun and duty while he cast about for a direction to his life. If your neighborhood and your town were stocked with guys like him, maybe no one would be winning a Nobel Prize, but it would be a really good place to live.
Eastwood made a controversial decision to cast the three servicemen as themselves. The acting, therefore, is a bit amateurish and flat, matched by the screenplay and directorial style. "Lawrence of Arabia" or "A Man for All Seasons," it's not, but the effect is charming nevertheless. The three young men are completely ordinary in an old-fashioned way, fellows of average ability and unremarkable upbringing. The main focus is on the formative experiences of Spencer Stone, the guy who physically tackled the gun- and knife-wielding terrorist, from his mildly disappointing interactions with an unsympathetic education system, to his mother's disgust at the suggestion that he take drugs to keep him from looking out the window during boring classes, his impulsive decision to get into shape in order to qualify for a pararescue career in the military, and his sharp disappointment at failing to qualify for his first choice of service.
In another movie, all these experiences would show how society failed a young man and led him down a path of anomie and drug use, or spurred him to cure cancer in defiance of his small-minded critics. Instead, Spencer fumes over his disappointments, but continues along the military paths that remain open to him, picking up tools and experiences here and there, showing mild sparks of courage and independence, and finally making the fateful decision to board the 15:17 train to Paris with his two childhood friends, now also in the service and also on leave.
The attack itself is not terribly dramatic, considering the potential for horrible injury and death. It's over fairly quickly. The heroes have a bit of luck. The former would-be pararescuer calls on his physical strength, his jiu jitsu training, and a bit of first-aid education to stop the bad guy and help the injured train passenger. All three take care of business briskly; the main character is awarded the Legion of Honor.
Mediocre critical reviews correctly noted the flat tone of the film. What I enjoyed was the non-drama. This was not the "They Jacked with the Wrong Guy" genre, one I particularly enjoy, in which the crisis happens to someone who is fatally underestimated by the villains, like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard." The Everyman hero in "The 15:17 to Paris" made something modest of his modest circumstances, which fitted him to step up and do the right thing in a moment of unexpected crisis. He made few demands on life, concentrating instead on choosing something appropriate from the opportunities that randomly presented themselves to him and putting a reasonable effort into forming himself to meet them, without either whining or self-aggrandizing. He apparently assumed that many of the things he tried to learn in the service had been dead ends or wasted effort, but they all came in handy when he disarmed the bad guy on the train and helped the injured guy until EMTs could arrive.
Spencer remained cheerful and open to both fun and duty while he cast about for a direction to his life. If your neighborhood and your town were stocked with guys like him, maybe no one would be winning a Nobel Prize, but it would be a really good place to live.
Notes from the brink
Craftiness obsesses me at most times, but never more than at this season. It's amazing what you can find if you dig into a craft box you haven't opened for 30 years. And the instructions for folding these pretty strips of paper into Moravian stars were still available on the internet! Now I'm in search of a source of much wider and longer strips so I can make stars about 10 inches wide instead of these tiny things. The tiny ones will go on my tree, the big one on my Church's very tall (regrettably artificial) one.
Proof of concept: you can, in fact, tape strips of ordinary typing paper together and make a bigger star. Now I'll have to experiment with a nicer-quality paper with tape joints in different locations. This 1-1/2-inch strip makes a star about six inches wide, almost as big as what I'm aiming at.
And here are the final products. I can get a strip of 2-1/8 inches in width and 11 inches long by cutting an 8.5x11 sheet in quarters and taping four strips end to end to make a strip 2-1/8 by 44 inches long, about the right proportions. Four of those make a star. That's the size of the largest star, on the right. The two tiny stars are made of strips 1/2 inch wide.
Proof of concept: you can, in fact, tape strips of ordinary typing paper together and make a bigger star. Now I'll have to experiment with a nicer-quality paper with tape joints in different locations. This 1-1/2-inch strip makes a star about six inches wide, almost as big as what I'm aiming at.
And here are the final products. I can get a strip of 2-1/8 inches in width and 11 inches long by cutting an 8.5x11 sheet in quarters and taping four strips end to end to make a strip 2-1/8 by 44 inches long, about the right proportions. Four of those make a star. That's the size of the largest star, on the right. The two tiny stars are made of strips 1/2 inch wide.
Yule Tree
The Hall’s tree. It’s not decorated to compete with Tex, but it is twelve feet tall. Second highest tree I’ve ever mounted, but of better quality I think. The other one was 18 feet, but a short needle pine. This one is a spruce.
Hypothesis Affirmed
Shooting the cops in this case is dangerous—they may send a SWAT team to kill you—and in many places it's illegal. But it is nevertheless morally permissible, indeed heroic and admirable.
One... MILLION Dollars!
The state of New York has an idea to reduce gun ownership: make every gun owner carry a million-dollar insurance policy.
Well, it's not a new idea. We've talked about this before, both here and at the now-defunct Winds of Change. Then as now, gun-haters were sure that the expense of such a policy would cripple interest in guns. The truth is, if such policies were widely offered, they'd be pretty cheap.
I have a million dollar liability policy as part of my homeowner's insurance. The cost of this policy is a few tens of dollars a year -- on the order of thirty bucks. I spend more on coffee, monthly, than I do annually on this policy. And that is in spite of the fact that this covers a wide degree of risks, everything from 'slipped on the ice on your walk in the winter' to 'chose to climb a tree on the back 40 and broke my leg.' It covers you if you get burned on my fireplace, or if a roofbeam should fall on your head. Lots of stuff is covered.
The gun policy they're proposing only covers one thing: if I should shoot someone and get sued for it.
Let's run through that in very round numbers to make the math easy. Now there are 300,000,000+ guns in America, owned by around 100,000,000 households. There are just around 100,000 gun injuries or deaths a year. Two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides. Those that are intentional homicides wouldn't be covered by insurance policies because they are crimes, and you can't insure yourself against the consequences of intentionally committing a crime. Only the rare accidental shooting (489, or about half of one thousand in 2015), or a lawful self-defense that resulted in a successful lawsuit, would be covered.
So we've got around 500 annual accidents in a nation of three hundred million guns; assuming all guns were equally likely to cause that injury, and a 100% probability of the insurance company having to pay a claim over it, then the probability that your insurance company has to pay a claim is about .000016. Add in estimated defensive gun use, and there's another group of guns you'd have to insure, but again it's divided over 300,000,000 guns owned by 100,000,000 households. Estimates for how often guns are used defensively vary widely, but the low side numbers are all from the gun-control side; if they believe their own numbers, it's going to be a vanishingly small number of incidents that need to be paid out.
It's a million-dollar policy, but the average cost of a gunshot wound is only $150,000. Assuming that adding in the defensive uses to the accidental shootings fully doubles the number of payoffs, then we've got $150,000 x 1,000 incidents, or $150,000,000 in annual payouts. Divide that by 300,000,000 guns, and we'll need about fifty cents a gun to cover that.
So, if you own six guns, that's three dollars a year. Of course it'll be a bit higher, because the insurance company would have operating costs. But it's not going to break the backs of the firearms injury, even if it survives constitutional review.
'The Virgin Mary Couldn't Consent'
An argument from a Satan-loving professor in Minnesota.
One of the interesting things about the Bible, then, is just how interested God seems to be in humanity's willful compliance. It's true that God punishes bad behavior sometimes. It's also true that God forgoes punishment where there is reform, sometimes. But the central fact of Jesus' mission in the Bible is the search for individual choice -- consent -- on behalf of each and every soul. Jesus does not compel, he argues in favor and leaves it to his listeners to decide what to do with what he says; ultimately, what to do with him.
It's an unreflective pose, this professor's. One ought to think more deeply when one is supposedly wed to the life of the mind.
“The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario. Happy Holidays"The Bible makes a surprisingly large amount of God's desire for human consent, when you consider the power differential. God doesn't need human consent for anything. Like Eru Ilúvatar in the opening act of the Silmarillion, an all-powerful God could readily rework even the most rebellious dissent into a new harmony. So he could respect your free will without cost to himself or his designs. In point of fact, on this model, it's only because of his choice that any of us have free will at all. A god like Ilúvatar could have built mindless machines to execute his designs.
Another Twitter user called the professor’s claim into question, noting that the Bible states that the Virgin Mary did, indeed, agree to God’s plan for her.
“The biblical god regularly punished disobedience,” Sprankle rebutted. “The power difference (deity vs mortal) and the potential for violence for saying ‘no’ negates her ‘yes.’ To put someone in this position is an unethical abuse of power at best and grossly predatory at worst.”...
Sprankle also decorated his Christmas tree with Satanic decor, as shown in another tweet he sent this past weekend.
One of the interesting things about the Bible, then, is just how interested God seems to be in humanity's willful compliance. It's true that God punishes bad behavior sometimes. It's also true that God forgoes punishment where there is reform, sometimes. But the central fact of Jesus' mission in the Bible is the search for individual choice -- consent -- on behalf of each and every soul. Jesus does not compel, he argues in favor and leaves it to his listeners to decide what to do with what he says; ultimately, what to do with him.
It's an unreflective pose, this professor's. One ought to think more deeply when one is supposedly wed to the life of the mind.
Language Like a Free Market
Several of us seem to be interested in language, so I thought I'd post a link to editor and language columnist for The Economist Lane Greene's thoughts on the descriptivist / prescriptivist divide and the ways in which language operates like a free market.
Some quick excerpts:
Read on for a discussion of changes in English in the Great Vowel Shift, the evolution of the word buxom, the loss of Old English case endings, and the ways spontaneous order does its work in a language, much like it does its work in an economy.
Some quick excerpts:
Decades before the rise of social media, polarisation plagued discussions about language. By and large, it still does. Everyone who cares about the topic is officially required to take one of two stances. Either you smugly preen about the mistakes you find abhorrent – this makes you a so-called prescriptivist – or you show off your knowledge of language change, and poke holes in the prescriptivists’ facts – this makes you a descriptivist. Group membership is mandatory, and the two are mutually exclusive.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. I have two roles at my workplace: I am an editor and a language columnist. These two jobs more or less require me to be both a prescriptivist and a descriptivist. When people file me copy that has mistakes of grammar or mechanics, I fix them (as well as applying The Economist’s house style). But when it comes time to write my column, I study the weird mess of real language; rather than being a scold about this or that mistake, I try to teach myself (and so the reader) something new. Is this a split personality, or can the two be reconciled into a coherent philosophy? I believe they can.
...
Descriptivists – that is, virtually all academic linguists – will point out that semantic creep is how languages work. It’s just something words do: look up virtually any nontechnical word in the great historical Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which lists a word’s senses in historical order. You’ll see things such as the extension of decimate happening again and again and again. Words won’t sit still. The prescriptivist position, offered one linguist, is like taking a snapshot of the surface of the ocean and insisting that’s how ocean surfaces must look.
Be that as it may, retort prescriptivists, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. ...
Read on for a discussion of changes in English in the Great Vowel Shift, the evolution of the word buxom, the loss of Old English case endings, and the ways spontaneous order does its work in a language, much like it does its work in an economy.
But Is It Conscious?
And how would you know?
There are some standing answers, such as the Turing test, and Sebastian Rödl's test for self-consciousness. These are 'just to be sure' tests, though; they're arguments that we have reason to treat these as thinking beings, as conscious beings, and no reason not to do so. To be sure we aren't exploiting them, then, we should do so.
But consider the arguments from the Aristotelian discussion below, and think about the problem. Are these things somehow programmed to mimic consciousness, or are they becoming conscious? How could you tell?
There are some standing answers, such as the Turing test, and Sebastian Rödl's test for self-consciousness. These are 'just to be sure' tests, though; they're arguments that we have reason to treat these as thinking beings, as conscious beings, and no reason not to do so. To be sure we aren't exploiting them, then, we should do so.
But consider the arguments from the Aristotelian discussion below, and think about the problem. Are these things somehow programmed to mimic consciousness, or are they becoming conscious? How could you tell?
Different Definitions of Racism
Over at The Federalist, David Marcus writes about the problems America has because of the starkly different definitions of "racism" progressives and conservatives have. He suggests ways we could compromise on action without compromising on principles. I generally agree with his points, but I don't think the left wants to compromise on actions. I could be wrong, of course.
Here are the definitions and some key points about them:
I think he's done a good job in teasing out the definitions and why conservatives and progressives misunderstand each other on this point.
What to do about it is another thing altogether.
Here are the definitions and some key points about them:
There are two basic definitions of racism in the United States, one roughly associated with progressives and one roughly associated with conservatives. The former describes racism as the failure to acknowledge and seek to redress systemic discrimination against select disadvantaged minority groups. It is very broad and captures everything from unconscious bias to white supremacy. The latter views racism as making assumptions about, or taking action towards, an individual or group on the sole basis of their race. It is narrow and generally requires belief, intent, and animosity.
These definitions don’t simply differ; to a great extent they actually contradict each other. Much of the contradiction stems from the fact that the progressive definition of racism requires that an advantaged individual or group must be attacking the less privileged. The more conservative and narrow definition of racism requires no appeal to power structures, only to bias, and can be committed by anyone towards anyone.
...
There is a double standard here that progressives don’t actually deny. It is, in fact, baked into their definition of racism. Under their rubric, the definition of racist has a double standard precisely because society has double standards that they argue overwhelmingly disadvantage the less privileged. It is internally logical and consistent in a way a lot of conservatives don’t quite understand.
On the other hand, those on the left are often shocked when polls show that majorities of white people believe that they are discriminated against in the United States. They will point to economic data, political power, and cultural representation and say, “You people are crazy.” But under the narrower definition of racism, it makes perfect sense. These white people are reacting to the fact that they can be attacked on the basis of their race in ways others can’t. In addition, whites — and increasingly Asians — look at programs like affirmative action as inherently racist.
I think he's done a good job in teasing out the definitions and why conservatives and progressives misunderstand each other on this point.
What to do about it is another thing altogether.
Sign Me Up for Not Signing Up for That
The UN has an idea: give voting rights to migrants. Immediately.
We had a long series many years ago now on the franchise. The universal franchise makes some sense, and ultimately we didn't come up with anything better. But you shouldn't assign votes to children too young to have been educated in the proper way that the system works; nor too young to make dispassionate decisions in the light of reason; nor to people too recently arrived to understand fully what is going on.
These days I'm thinking that means that the 'proper education' requirement might disbar very many US citizens, even natural born ones, and that 'too young to make dispassionate decisions' might require raising the voting age to 35. I'm certainly not inclined to believe, from my observations, that we should be even more eager to enlist first-time voters who don't really understand America, how it works, or what its value might be.
Hidden amongst the 38 jargon-laced pages, the compact affirms the “entitlements” of migrants and refugees; including but not limited to additional job training, diaspora “trade fairs,” assistance sending money to their countries of origin, and a commitment to “educating” native communities on the benefits of multiculturalism and increased immigration.Even if I were in favor of higher levels of immigration, which currently I am not -- I think we need at least a generation to culturally absorb the ones we have already -- I would not be in favor of assigning the franchise to people immediately. You need to be here long enough to learn how we do things, and just why, before you should be voting.
The document insists it is based on “human rights law” and “upholds the principles of non-regression and non-discrimination.”
This means a nation-state is agreeing to not alter its own internal immigration policies after signing up to the compact. What supranational governmental organizations call “pooling sovereignty,” and what the rest of us call “giving up sovereignty.”
The document demands migrants get the same rights as natives, immediately, including but not limited to voting rights and access to welfare.
We had a long series many years ago now on the franchise. The universal franchise makes some sense, and ultimately we didn't come up with anything better. But you shouldn't assign votes to children too young to have been educated in the proper way that the system works; nor too young to make dispassionate decisions in the light of reason; nor to people too recently arrived to understand fully what is going on.
These days I'm thinking that means that the 'proper education' requirement might disbar very many US citizens, even natural born ones, and that 'too young to make dispassionate decisions' might require raising the voting age to 35. I'm certainly not inclined to believe, from my observations, that we should be even more eager to enlist first-time voters who don't really understand America, how it works, or what its value might be.
Things Aren't What They Used To Be
A meditation at The Federalist.
As I write in my new book, “I Used To Be Conservative: Confessions Of A Conservative Who Used To Be A Conservative Who Used To Be A Liberal,” “I could no longer be a conservative, because being a conservative could no longer be an option.” How true that is.
Sometimes you reach a point—usually when you have something to promote—when what you once thought no longer is what you think now. That point has arrived for me. It’s quite painful, as I’ve said on several CNN programs and YouTube interviews.
The conservatism of today is not the conservatism it was when I was younger, nor is it the liberalism it was when I was middle-aged. I can no longer sit idly by and pretend that what I once believed is what I believe now, or that anyone else should believe it. Or not.
Was Mueller Worth It?
Vanity Fair just published a 'Trump-Hater's guide to Mueller skepticism.' Objectively, the fines extracted from Paul Manafort have more than paid for the investigation, so it's certainly been worth it for the government financially.
And, too, it has been enlightening to watch Mueller make a lifelong public servant plead guilty to a charge of which he wasn't even suspected -- Flynn plead to lying to the FBI, in spite of the testimony from the agents who interviewed him that he was truthful and forthcoming. If he's willing to do that, well, we know that nothing he produces can be trusted without substantial supporting evidence. It's good to realize just how corrupt the government is, and Mueller himself in spite of his sterling reputation.
Mueller caught Flynn on a violation of working for Turkey without registering, which required altering the enforcement of the law governing those practices. Until recently, you could register after the fact; now it's a thing that you have to follow the law and register if you're lobbying the government on behalf of a foreign country. I suppose that's good, but it's interesting that the conviction required changing common practice.
Flynn eventually lost his house and his job and his security clearance, but even with the guilty pleas he extorted Mueller didn't have enough to ask for even a day in jail. So far the sentences faced by those he's haunted have ranged from two weeks to a month. Manafort will probably get hit harder, but not for anything he did with Donald Trump; and even there, I notice that Mueller mostly made him plead guilty to the charges that he couldn't convict on in court. Mueller's record of actually proving things is pretty weak.
I think we have learned from this that the Department of Justice is entirely corrupt at the top, and should be disbanded and replaced. That's an important insight, well worth the price of an investigation that -- as mentioned -- paid for itself.
So sure, it was worth it. Or will have been, if we follow through on punishing the corruption that it has revealed.
And, too, it has been enlightening to watch Mueller make a lifelong public servant plead guilty to a charge of which he wasn't even suspected -- Flynn plead to lying to the FBI, in spite of the testimony from the agents who interviewed him that he was truthful and forthcoming. If he's willing to do that, well, we know that nothing he produces can be trusted without substantial supporting evidence. It's good to realize just how corrupt the government is, and Mueller himself in spite of his sterling reputation.
Mueller caught Flynn on a violation of working for Turkey without registering, which required altering the enforcement of the law governing those practices. Until recently, you could register after the fact; now it's a thing that you have to follow the law and register if you're lobbying the government on behalf of a foreign country. I suppose that's good, but it's interesting that the conviction required changing common practice.
Flynn eventually lost his house and his job and his security clearance, but even with the guilty pleas he extorted Mueller didn't have enough to ask for even a day in jail. So far the sentences faced by those he's haunted have ranged from two weeks to a month. Manafort will probably get hit harder, but not for anything he did with Donald Trump; and even there, I notice that Mueller mostly made him plead guilty to the charges that he couldn't convict on in court. Mueller's record of actually proving things is pretty weak.
I think we have learned from this that the Department of Justice is entirely corrupt at the top, and should be disbanded and replaced. That's an important insight, well worth the price of an investigation that -- as mentioned -- paid for itself.
So sure, it was worth it. Or will have been, if we follow through on punishing the corruption that it has revealed.
A Big Day for Aristotelians
A plant 'cyborg' has proven to have the capacity to move itself around to seek better light. We all know that plants can detect light, and can engage in some limited movement of their leaves in order to maximize exposure. Scientists have figured out how to translate that into an ability to let the whole plant move itself, determining where it should sit.
The difference between plants and animals, he thought, was just this capacity to move one's self in order to obtain food. The motive soul was a higher level of soul because it required an ability to distinguish things distant from yourself, rather than simply to absorb things that you came into contact with accidentally. Hans Jonas, in The Phenomenon of Life, argues that this capacity requires a self-conscious mind: a hawk must be able to distinguish that it is different from the rabbit. That isn't necessarily clear, though; there needs to be some sort of process by which the hawk finds the rabbit's presence actionable, but it might not be a conscious process. Still, it makes sense to say it is: certainly, in us, we recognize ourselves as different from the hunted animal. There is no special reason to assume it is otherwise for the hawk, there is just no proof that the hawk experiences consciousness.
(Although, speaking of birds, I think it's at least suggestive that crows not only display advanced problem solving in spite of having brains that contain none of the structures we think humans use for it, they also seem to be able to recognize people who have been mean and to communicate that to others in their murder. But we don't know what their experiences are like, or even if they 'have experiences' at all.)
So anyway, it turns out that plants have the ability to process the information they would need to move around; they just don't, naturally, have the capability to move around. For Aristotle, the soul is the perfection of the thing according to its own nature. Wouldn't the plant be more perfect if it could move, just as an animal would be more perfect if it could reason (as, it seems, crows can)?
If the answer is yes, then we come to another Aristotelian dictum, this one from the Physics: it is the role of art to perfect nature. That is to say that the human soul, which is rational in its highest part, can see where the natural has failed to actualize all of its potential. We can, through art, improve nature by bringing it more fully to its complete perfection. The art of medicine is essentially this, or has been up until now: the eye should see, and see well, but does not, and so the doctor works to try to restore or perfect the sight.
So the question to ask is this: are we perfecting the plants' nature, and if so, does that mean that they really do have an animal (motive) soul that has only existed so far in potency? If so, do they have rational souls in potency as well? We have more reason than Aristotle had to think that animals can reason, at least some of them. Perhaps all animals have rational souls that haven't been fully actualized; perhaps, with art, they could be. Plants as well.
That leads to another ancient view, more Plato's than Aristotle's.
The idea is reasonably simple—place sensors that listen to the electrical signals generated by a plant and then convert those signals to commands carried out by the motorized wheels. The result is a plant that can respond to changes in light direction by moving itself closer to the source.If you are an Aristotelian thinker, this is really an interesting development. Aristotle argues (in De Anima) that the human soul has three parts, the rational, the motive (or animal), and the nutrative (or plant-like). Humans, plants, and animals contain the capacity to take nutrition from the world and put it into our own order: to rebuild our cells, say, with proteins taken from outside us. All of us do that, and it is the distinction between living things and things like rocks that are not alive.
The difference between plants and animals, he thought, was just this capacity to move one's self in order to obtain food. The motive soul was a higher level of soul because it required an ability to distinguish things distant from yourself, rather than simply to absorb things that you came into contact with accidentally. Hans Jonas, in The Phenomenon of Life, argues that this capacity requires a self-conscious mind: a hawk must be able to distinguish that it is different from the rabbit. That isn't necessarily clear, though; there needs to be some sort of process by which the hawk finds the rabbit's presence actionable, but it might not be a conscious process. Still, it makes sense to say it is: certainly, in us, we recognize ourselves as different from the hunted animal. There is no special reason to assume it is otherwise for the hawk, there is just no proof that the hawk experiences consciousness.
(Although, speaking of birds, I think it's at least suggestive that crows not only display advanced problem solving in spite of having brains that contain none of the structures we think humans use for it, they also seem to be able to recognize people who have been mean and to communicate that to others in their murder. But we don't know what their experiences are like, or even if they 'have experiences' at all.)
So anyway, it turns out that plants have the ability to process the information they would need to move around; they just don't, naturally, have the capability to move around. For Aristotle, the soul is the perfection of the thing according to its own nature. Wouldn't the plant be more perfect if it could move, just as an animal would be more perfect if it could reason (as, it seems, crows can)?
If the answer is yes, then we come to another Aristotelian dictum, this one from the Physics: it is the role of art to perfect nature. That is to say that the human soul, which is rational in its highest part, can see where the natural has failed to actualize all of its potential. We can, through art, improve nature by bringing it more fully to its complete perfection. The art of medicine is essentially this, or has been up until now: the eye should see, and see well, but does not, and so the doctor works to try to restore or perfect the sight.
So the question to ask is this: are we perfecting the plants' nature, and if so, does that mean that they really do have an animal (motive) soul that has only existed so far in potency? If so, do they have rational souls in potency as well? We have more reason than Aristotle had to think that animals can reason, at least some of them. Perhaps all animals have rational souls that haven't been fully actualized; perhaps, with art, they could be. Plants as well.
That leads to another ancient view, more Plato's than Aristotle's.
Dod Yn Ôl At Fy Nghoed
A Welsh poetic insight into human nature.
[Robert Macfarlane] credits his parents and his grandfather for passing on to him an abiding love for wild places. “I remember seeing a golden eagle for the first time and was amazed that a bird could be so big.”
Macfarlane believes passionately that all children should have the chance to form such memories. Does he think the Government should do more to increase available green space near to home for all children? “Absolutely. I would really like to see nature and environmental well-being in Section 78 of the Education Act so that nature and our relationship with it becomes a part of life, a part of behaviour and ethics.” He mentions the Welsh phrase dod yn ôl at fy nghoed, which means “to return to a balanced state of mind”, but literally means “to return to my trees”.
A Second
I'd like to second AVI's recommendation to read this Virginia Postrel essay on culture. This is something we've been talking about for years here at the Hall, but I agree with her assessment that conservatives still have no better ideas about what to do about it. It's as much a magic box for us as economics seems to be for the socialist left.
My best suggestion from a few years ago was to work to introduce the young to old movies. There was a golden age of cinema in Hollywood that celebrated America and its values, in forms variously sweeping and romantic (like The Alamo) or thoughtful and introspective (like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). Our left has already worked out a countermeasure, though: they've taught the youth to search out 'problematic' structures in every older form of art, and then to shun it lest they be contaminated by these poisonous ideas.
It's tricky. In principle engaging older forms of art -- not just Hollywood as it was, but Shakespeare or Homer, Malory or the artistic books of the Bible -- still has the potential to awaken and enlighten. Perhaps philosophy is still a valid entry point; you can start them on Plato, and then suggest that they should probably read Homer in order to better understand the references. Then you could say, "But, you know, it's going to be different from what 'we' think today. Part of the exercise is coming to understand a world outside of your own, which will in turn give you a new platform from which to criticize the world you live in today."
Indeed, that is ultimately the whole point of the exercise. Many academic disciplines today only teach a system of thought, which you are simply to apply to everything you encounter. The outcomes can be predicted in just the same way that the outcomes of a sausage-making-machine can be predicted. It doesn't matter what you put in the one end, what comes out will look like sausage, because it is the function of the machine to ensure that sausage is produced from whatever you put in it.
At 20-something, and even the early parts of 30-something, this can feel like knowledge: 'I've learned to understand the world in a systematic and coherent way!' Yet you haven't learned to understand the world at all; you've learned to force the things you encounter in the world into a meat grinder. What comes out looks exactly as you expected it to because of the function of the systems you've been taught to apply. To really learn something, you'd need to be able to step outside the system and criticize it independently.
You can only do that, though, when you have somewhere else to 'stand.' You need the perspective that comes with distance. In other words, you need to be able to think in a different way, which means thinking from a different place. You need an opposing discipline or, alternatively or additionally, you need an older world. Coming to see things the way an ancient Greek might have seen them gives you an option. You can look at the system from outside, and see if you still like what it's making.
So too the learning of other ancient ways of thought: Catholic, Jewish, and yes, Islamic; Buddhist, Viking, Hindu, Anglo-Saxon. Read Medieval poetics, if you find that you like them; study the 19th century novels. Anything to get you outside your system, and give you another place to stand.
My best suggestion from a few years ago was to work to introduce the young to old movies. There was a golden age of cinema in Hollywood that celebrated America and its values, in forms variously sweeping and romantic (like The Alamo) or thoughtful and introspective (like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). Our left has already worked out a countermeasure, though: they've taught the youth to search out 'problematic' structures in every older form of art, and then to shun it lest they be contaminated by these poisonous ideas.
It's tricky. In principle engaging older forms of art -- not just Hollywood as it was, but Shakespeare or Homer, Malory or the artistic books of the Bible -- still has the potential to awaken and enlighten. Perhaps philosophy is still a valid entry point; you can start them on Plato, and then suggest that they should probably read Homer in order to better understand the references. Then you could say, "But, you know, it's going to be different from what 'we' think today. Part of the exercise is coming to understand a world outside of your own, which will in turn give you a new platform from which to criticize the world you live in today."
Indeed, that is ultimately the whole point of the exercise. Many academic disciplines today only teach a system of thought, which you are simply to apply to everything you encounter. The outcomes can be predicted in just the same way that the outcomes of a sausage-making-machine can be predicted. It doesn't matter what you put in the one end, what comes out will look like sausage, because it is the function of the machine to ensure that sausage is produced from whatever you put in it.
At 20-something, and even the early parts of 30-something, this can feel like knowledge: 'I've learned to understand the world in a systematic and coherent way!' Yet you haven't learned to understand the world at all; you've learned to force the things you encounter in the world into a meat grinder. What comes out looks exactly as you expected it to because of the function of the systems you've been taught to apply. To really learn something, you'd need to be able to step outside the system and criticize it independently.
You can only do that, though, when you have somewhere else to 'stand.' You need the perspective that comes with distance. In other words, you need to be able to think in a different way, which means thinking from a different place. You need an opposing discipline or, alternatively or additionally, you need an older world. Coming to see things the way an ancient Greek might have seen them gives you an option. You can look at the system from outside, and see if you still like what it's making.
So too the learning of other ancient ways of thought: Catholic, Jewish, and yes, Islamic; Buddhist, Viking, Hindu, Anglo-Saxon. Read Medieval poetics, if you find that you like them; study the 19th century novels. Anything to get you outside your system, and give you another place to stand.
Disgusting Contradictions
A 28-year-old dominatrix in England has decided to use her power to convince white Tories to vote socialist.
Maybury, aka Mistress Rebecca, is a self-styled political dominatrix. She plays “with concepts of humiliation”, using words and mind games rather than whips and costumes to cut her cohorts down to size. “I’m interested in men’s aspirations, how they feel confident and how vapid that confidence often is... The kind of job titles they want, the car they drive, the women they say they’re attracted to publicly, but not privately… I have an application form I make them fill out so that I can find out their favourite leader, their favourite band and film. Once I sweep away the capitalist achievements, then what remains are their real desires. Most men never even consider what their masculinity is based on, which is the frightening thing. All masculinity, when we look at it from a historical point of view, is to dominate women.”Yes, well, no, but let's leave that for today. What I really want to get at is this business of stripping away 'capitalist achievements' in order to get to our real desires. Let's follow that thread.
One client claimed “he was a ‘female supremacist’ and a Tory. I found that such a disgusting contradiction, I couldn’t let him get away with it. Submissives often say that all they want to do is make their mistress happy, and what could make me happier than him becoming a socialist?”What indeed could make you happier than socialism? By the way, how socialist are you personally, Ms... er, "Mistress" Rebecca?
[She] has since developed her dominatrix work into a unique type of performance art. “I just realised I can use my job as a dominatrix to be a version of a corporate creative, like an art director, where the interns do all the work. The idea is they make the work for me and then I make the money from it when it is sold.”Marx would be so proud.
Haeledh
In his essay The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien mentions a phrase used by the Beowulf poet: "Haeledh Under Heofenum." He says this might be variously given as 'heroes under heaven' or 'mighty men on the earth' (as the earth is what is under heaven). But it's curious to me that there's no obvious descendant for the word "haeledh." "Hero" isn't it; that's of Greek extraction.
In fact, I began to wonder if any related word had survived, as the lost word "frith" is a cognate of the modern "friend" and "freedom." (For good reason! See the sidebar for a whole section of relevant links.) It looks as if there was an article by Kathleen E. Dubs that was highly relevant, but I don't seem to have access to that journal.
In a bit of research, I found a few potentially useful links, but they themselves lack important context. One is this old "glossography" of the original languages of Britain and Ireland. It mentions the word in an interesting context, but its comparative language is almost all clearly Norman impositions (e.g., 'frank' really does mean, 'having the (good) manner of a Frank,' and was brought from France by the conquest).
Here, similarly, is a French-language source that gives the reference in comparison to several warrior-related terms in French, e.g., guerrier. I find it fascinating that this Anglo-Saxon word was once well-enough known to Francophones to serve as a useful reference for them. But it also suggests that a close cognate for "healedh" may be "to hold," which would make it "those who hold."
So looking into that, it appears to be correct: the West Saxon version of the root word is "haeldan."
And now it makes sense. "Holders of the earth" or "Those who hold, under heaven," does imply the power associated with heroism in the ancient context. To take hold of a part of the world, to hold it against others, to hold the order of the land together in the face of dangers from both nature and other men -- and even against dragons, if you are Beowulf.
In fact, I began to wonder if any related word had survived, as the lost word "frith" is a cognate of the modern "friend" and "freedom." (For good reason! See the sidebar for a whole section of relevant links.) It looks as if there was an article by Kathleen E. Dubs that was highly relevant, but I don't seem to have access to that journal.
In a bit of research, I found a few potentially useful links, but they themselves lack important context. One is this old "glossography" of the original languages of Britain and Ireland. It mentions the word in an interesting context, but its comparative language is almost all clearly Norman impositions (e.g., 'frank' really does mean, 'having the (good) manner of a Frank,' and was brought from France by the conquest).
Here, similarly, is a French-language source that gives the reference in comparison to several warrior-related terms in French, e.g., guerrier. I find it fascinating that this Anglo-Saxon word was once well-enough known to Francophones to serve as a useful reference for them. But it also suggests that a close cognate for "healedh" may be "to hold," which would make it "those who hold."
So looking into that, it appears to be correct: the West Saxon version of the root word is "haeldan."
And now it makes sense. "Holders of the earth" or "Those who hold, under heaven," does imply the power associated with heroism in the ancient context. To take hold of a part of the world, to hold it against others, to hold the order of the land together in the face of dangers from both nature and other men -- and even against dragons, if you are Beowulf.
Krampus
And then there's Krampus.
In Central European folklore, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure described as "half-goat, half-demon", who, during the Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved, in contrast with Saint Nicholas, who rewards the well-behaved with gifts.... The origin of the figure is unclear; some folklorists and anthropologists have postulated it as having pre-Christian origins....Maybe your elders weren't so easily frightened.
Europeans have been exchanging greeting cards featuring Krampus since the 1800s. Sometimes introduced with Gruß vom Krampus (Greetings from Krampus), the cards usually have humorous rhymes and poems. Krampus is often featured looming menacingly over children. He is also shown as having one human foot and one cloven hoof. In some, Krampus has sexual overtones; he is pictured pursuing buxom women. Over time, the representation of Krampus in the cards has changed; older versions have a more frightening Krampus[.]
The problem with charity
Have you ever wondered why it does no good to point out to leftists that conservatives give more to charity than progressives?
One page after the champagne ad [in the New Yorker], we see a photograph of a smiling older white man, with the caption, “He loves helping kids. So he gives.” He calls on the reader to “give something back to the world.” My blood pressure rises when I see ads like this, because it goes to the larger problem of charity in America nowadays. If the system worked as it should, and if rich people paid their fair share of taxes, then the rest of us wouldn’t need to beg them to peel off a piece of their income and toss it back to the people.Why count on people to give when you can just take?
Footprints and vectors
As they say, Trump needs a wartime consiglieri.
John Solomon does his usual excellent investigative reporting into the muck that is the Trump-Russia investigation.
John Solomon does his usual excellent investigative reporting into the muck that is the Trump-Russia investigation.
Early in my reporting that unraveled the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe, tying it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses, I started to see patterns just as in the old mob meetings: FBI or intelligence-connected figures kept showing up in Trump Town USA during the 2016 campaign with a common calling card.
The question now is, who sent them and why?
Interviews with more than 50 witnesses in the Trump case and reviews of hundreds of pages of court filings confirm the following:
At least six people with long-established ties to the FBI or to U.S. and Western intelligence made entrees to key figures in the Trump business organization or his presidential campaign between March and October 2016;Campaign figures were contacted by at least two Russian figures whose justification for being in the United States were rare law enforcement parole visas controlled by the U.S. Justice Department;Intelligence or diplomatic figures connected to two of America’s closest allies, Britain and Australia, gathered intelligence or instigated contacts with Trump campaign figures during that same period;Some of the conversations and contacts that were monitored occurred on foreign soil and resulted in the creation of transcripts; Nearly all of the contacts involved the same overture — a discussion about possible political dirt or stolen emails harmful to Hillary Clinton, or unsolicited business in London or Moscow;Several of the contacts occurred before the FBI formally launched a legally authorized probe into the Trump campaign and possible collusion on July 31, 2016.
The Mari Lywd
Another ancient holdover animal holiday tradition, this one Celtic. It survives in Wales. Although I only encountered it tonight, it has for many years been part of our decorations to put Christmas ornaments for eyes into the bovine rather than equine skulls decorating the walls. It’s festive, even without the ribbons and riddles.
The Yule Goat
An article on the subject of Yule goats, a Christmas tradition with pre-Christian roots in Scandinavia. So do Christmas trees, of course; so do a lot of Christmas rituals. If you find them charming, Grimfrost has Yule goat sets on sale right now.
Believe the Science!
As a case in point, Buss and von Hippel highlight the recent book Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds by psychologist Cordelia Fine – a text that argues against biological differences between the sexes (and in favour of sociological explanations) and which won wide praise from journalists and left-leaning scientists around the globe, while at the same time receiving scathing criticism from evolutionary biologists and psychologists with relevant expertise in evolutionary science.The hell you say.
Buss and von Hippel argue that Fine and others are motivated by social justice goals (in this case gender equality) to reject findings from evolutionary biology and psychology[.]
Regional Pride, and Rest in Peace
AVI mentioned in passing over at his place a certain tolerance for 'moderate' regional pride. I'm not sure I've adhered to the moderation standard, which I hadn't understood was expected; but in fairness, Southerners are rarely moderate in this regard.
By sad coincidence, Roy Clark passed away just a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I mentioned it at the time. He was a man whom our region could be proud to have born. His contributions to the world included music and humor, and he was great at both. Here he is with Buck Owens and another of my favorite fellows, the late, great Jerry Reed.
And here he is with Buck Trent, doing a playful variation on a playful standard.
Although he was most famous for these Southern types, he was a thoroughly trained musician who could play anything on one of several instruments.
It was nice to share the stage with these men for a while. I hope they will be long remembered.
UPDATE:
Let's do a couple more. One older:
And one with Johnny Cash. Both of these are funny because it's impossible to believe Roy Clark ever shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Johnny Cash could sell the line, but Roy Clark just wants to play tricks on the guitar.
Johnny doesn't care. He's having fun too.
By sad coincidence, Roy Clark passed away just a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I mentioned it at the time. He was a man whom our region could be proud to have born. His contributions to the world included music and humor, and he was great at both. Here he is with Buck Owens and another of my favorite fellows, the late, great Jerry Reed.
And here he is with Buck Trent, doing a playful variation on a playful standard.
Although he was most famous for these Southern types, he was a thoroughly trained musician who could play anything on one of several instruments.
It was nice to share the stage with these men for a while. I hope they will be long remembered.
UPDATE:
Let's do a couple more. One older:
And one with Johnny Cash. Both of these are funny because it's impossible to believe Roy Clark ever shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Johnny Cash could sell the line, but Roy Clark just wants to play tricks on the guitar.
Johnny doesn't care. He's having fun too.
Inappropriate Christmas gifts
This is a gift you should reserve for small children of parents who have deeply offended you--like giving a young boy a drum set. But I have to admit to a strong temptation. It's a toy fire truck that lights up and emits a siren, which is bad enough, but it also squirts water out of the hose attached to the ladder, how cool is that?
The best part is the video on the Amazon page, showing an adult running the toy through its paces, complete with a small alcohol fire in what looks like carpet near the truck, which the adult carefully extinguishes. You can tell by the wording of the toy's description that no American lawyers went anywhere near this promotional video:
My grand-nephew is in that toddler toy-truck stage. After last week's snows in the Northeast, his admirable father affixed cardboard snow-plow blades to all his trucks, and now the kid runs around the house delightedly yelling "'no pow! 'no pow!"
The best part is the video on the Amazon page, showing an adult running the toy through its paces, complete with a small alcohol fire in what looks like carpet near the truck, which the adult carefully extinguishes. You can tell by the wording of the toy's description that no American lawyers went anywhere near this promotional video:
IMAGINAIVE EDUCATION TOY: This fire rescue truck is a great educational toy for kids, for it helps to cultivating the toddlers fire protection consciousness and emergency situation handling, so that children can protect themselves in the danger to some extents.
My grand-nephew is in that toddler toy-truck stage. After last week's snows in the Northeast, his admirable father affixed cardboard snow-plow blades to all his trucks, and now the kid runs around the house delightedly yelling "'no pow! 'no pow!"
A Series of Historical Analogies
Beware the attempts to roll things back to control by 'the experts.'
The author actually has some credentials of his own: a former US Army infantry NCO, with a Ph.D. in history.
The author actually has some credentials of his own: a former US Army infantry NCO, with a Ph.D. in history.
A Reasonable Point
"Giving your child a dumb name like ABCDE should be considered child abuse because you’re willing to condemn your child to a lifetime of mockery so you can get attention."
Relevant story.
I wouldn't want the government to have authority to prosecute for 'child abuse,' but I definitely think that we should adopt the cultural stance that this sort of thing is an abusive behavior. We ought to treat parents who do this to their children as bad people.
By the way, why are all these crazy stories coming out of Texas? What's going on down there? Texas used to be reliable.
Relevant story.
I wouldn't want the government to have authority to prosecute for 'child abuse,' but I definitely think that we should adopt the cultural stance that this sort of thing is an abusive behavior. We ought to treat parents who do this to their children as bad people.
By the way, why are all these crazy stories coming out of Texas? What's going on down there? Texas used to be reliable.
A Wrinkle in the Texas Divorce Case
This feature of the story about the divorce in which the parents dispute the gender of their child escaped me before.
I don't ever want to hear another word about how America is some kind of patriarchy.
In their divorce proceedings, the mother has charged the father with child abuse for not affirming James as transgender, has sought restraining orders against him, and is seeking to terminate his parental rights. She is also seeking to require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight.A mother is asking a court to force a father to pay for the castration of his son. She's not just demanding that the father be forced to accept the castration of his son, which would be a monstrosity by itself. She is demanding that he be forced to pay for it to be done. An American court is actually entertaining that request.
I don't ever want to hear another word about how America is some kind of patriarchy.
In Fairness to Brian Kemp
The Free Beacon points out that registration and turnout both increased under Secretary of State Kemp -- now Governor-Elect Kemp.
OK. Fair enough. The real problem with the system wasn't registration, though: it was the ultra-hackable computers with no way to verify that your vote had been counted, or that it hadn't been altered. I don't think Kemp cheated, because if he had the margin would have been safer: if he had given himself 51% instead of 50.3%, there would have been no talk of a runoff and a lot less pressure toward a recount. The duty of the Secretary of State isn't satisfied simply by not cheating, though: he ought to have done his best to set up a system that no one thought you could cheat.
OK. Fair enough. The real problem with the system wasn't registration, though: it was the ultra-hackable computers with no way to verify that your vote had been counted, or that it hadn't been altered. I don't think Kemp cheated, because if he had the margin would have been safer: if he had given himself 51% instead of 50.3%, there would have been no talk of a runoff and a lot less pressure toward a recount. The duty of the Secretary of State isn't satisfied simply by not cheating, though: he ought to have done his best to set up a system that no one thought you could cheat.
Unsympathetic Guys Sometimes Deserve to Win
The Supreme Court looks set to deliver a win to a heroin dealer, along with thousands of others punished by excessive fines and asset forfeiture.
A decision in favor of 37-year-old Tyson Timbs, of Marion, Indiana, also could buttress efforts to limit the confiscation by local law enforcement of property belonging to someone suspected of a crime. Police and prosecutors often keep the proceeds.I hope they lose big.
Timbs was on hand at the high court for arguments that were largely a one-sided affair in which the main question appeared to be how broadly the state would lose.
And Don't Forget the Fire Hazard
Schools in Sweden ban St. Lucia celebrations. (Some of you know these from The Ref's famous Scandinavian dinner scene.)
According to preschool manager Anna Karmskog, they want to avoid discrimination, offensive treatment and do not want to “exclude” anyone.Well, in fairness, most of the Muslim migrants are without concerns about gender, equality, exclusivity, or discrimination. So really, everybody is getting their way.
It is also seen from an “equality perspective”. Many people buy Lucia costumes for one occasion. It does not feel right to force the parents to buy these, she says.
Furthermore, many children are reported to be anxious and sad in a large crowd, and the “gender perspective” as the children “walk in a row” is questioned. The school has not discussed the cancellation with the parents.
In Mellerud, Åsen’s school decided to boycott the Lucia celebrations altogether...
“But last week, the school celebrated Muhammad’s journey to heaven without even informing us.”, [one school parent said].
Some now say that the cancelled Lucia celebration is a prelude to tone down Christmas to adapt to Islam. Recently, to prevent terror attacks, barriers have also been set up at Christmas Markets in Malmö.
Battle of Visby
I came across this picture of a skull fused to a mail coif, from the 1361 Battle of Visby. The Swedish History Museum hosts the remains.
The issue at stake was, unsurprisingly, which government got to collect taxes. Gotland was paying taxes to the King of Sweden, but the Danes felt they had a claim -- and they also had professional fighting men with recent experience and what were at the time modern arms.
The issue at stake was, unsurprisingly, which government got to collect taxes. Gotland was paying taxes to the King of Sweden, but the Danes felt they had a claim -- and they also had professional fighting men with recent experience and what were at the time modern arms.
The Danish army was composed mainly of Danish and German troops, many mercenaries from the Baltic coast of Germany, with recent experience in the various feuds and wars between the German and Scandinavian states. These men would have worn what was known as Transitional armour, with iron or steel plates over vital areas and joints over a full suit of chain mail. They were led by Valdemar IV of Denmark. Against them was an army of Gutes, mainly freemen and minor nobles. The ordinary freemen appear to have worn more limited but still effective protection, with many skeletons that were excavated wearing a chain-mail shirt or a coat of plates to protect the torso. Some warriors may have worn a padded Gambeson or a leather jerkin or coat[.]The battle is contemporaneous with the Hundred Years War, which is why this array of armor is said to be 'transitional.' The early battles of the Hundred Years War were fought mostly in mail armor; by the end of the war, articulated plate armor was common not just for nobles but for knights and men at arms. This occurred somewhere in the middle, and less centrally to Europe than were England and France at that time.
Yeah, it's just like that
USA Today explains that the barbed wire at the U.S.'s southern border evokes troubling images of the Iron Curtain. It brings back memories, doesn't it? East Germany frantically pushing its refugees towards West Germany, where they hope to build better lives for themselves, and West Germany callously manning the wall with tear-gas-wielding jackbooted cops.
In other news, apparently tear gas is not a violation of the Geneva Convention when Macron uses it against French protesters. Speaking of the effect of tear gas, at least one would-be U.S. border-hopper understands what it's for: “If they’re launching tear gas,” Castillo said, “it’s better to head somewhere else.”
In other news, apparently tear gas is not a violation of the Geneva Convention when Macron uses it against French protesters. Speaking of the effect of tear gas, at least one would-be U.S. border-hopper understands what it's for: “If they’re launching tear gas,” Castillo said, “it’s better to head somewhere else.”
"Murphy v. Carpenter" & Tribal Sovereignty
The Supreme Court is hearing an interesting case. From NewsOK.com:
The population of Oklahoma is about 3.9 million people, so this affects a large percentage of them in some way.
The Trump administration sided with the state of Oklahoma:
If you are interested, Mvskoke News, the newspaper of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides some historical background to the case.
They also give some details on 6 amicus briefs filed in the case.
The question before the court in Carpenter v. Murphy is whether Congress disestablished the reservation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in the early 20th century. If not, that reservation created in 1866 still exists and major crimes involving tribal members in that region of eastern Oklahoma must be prosecuted in federal courts, not state courts.
...
Much of Tuesday's hour of arguments focused on the practical implications of a ruling in favor of the tribe. Several justices showed deep concern about the ramifications of a ruling in favor of the Creeks.
“There are 1.8 million people living in this area,” said Justice Stephen Breyer. “They have built their lives not necessarily on criminal law but on municipal regulations, property law, dog-related law, thousands of details. And now, if we say really this land ... belongs to the tribe, what happens to all those people? What happens to all those laws?”
...
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a President Donald Trump appointee, did not participate in Tuesday's arguments and will not take a side in an eventual opinion because he was on the 10th Circuit last year when it ruled that the Creek reservation still exists.
The population of Oklahoma is about 3.9 million people, so this affects a large percentage of them in some way.
The Trump administration sided with the state of Oklahoma:
Last August, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the murder conviction and death sentence of Patrick Murphy, who was convicted in state court of mutilating and murdering George Jacobs in 1999. The court ruled the Creek reservation still exists and Murphy therefore must be tried in federal court for the murder on reservation land.
The Justice Department's arguments were three-pronged: Congress abolished the Creek reservation, the 10th Circuit erroneously cherry-picked historical documents to conclude it didn't, and Oklahoma had jurisdiction in the Murphy case regardless.
“Congress granted the state jurisdiction to prosecute crimes involving Indians in the former Indian Territory as part of the series of acts leading to Oklahoma statehood,” Francisco wrote.
...
The states of Nebraska, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming filed a brief Monday asking the Supreme Court to side with Oklahoma, concerned tribal lands in their states could also be affected.
If you are interested, Mvskoke News, the newspaper of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides some historical background to the case.
They also give some details on 6 amicus briefs filed in the case.
The Nation on Economics
Laissez-faire for China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey -- but the regulatory state at home!
I suppose that will make for a "fairer world economy," if by "fairer" you mean "the US is no longer far out in front."
I suppose that will make for a "fairer world economy," if by "fairer" you mean "the US is no longer far out in front."
The Nation of Islam and Scientology
This is not a topic of interest to me, but it might be to some of you, and I know one of the co-authors.
The Chicago Principles of Free Speech
Apparently the University of Chicago's statement on freedom of speech is now being considered by Australia. The author of this piece doesn't think they need it, which probably means that they need it. If it's purely redundant, there's no harm; it's good to have redundant safeguards for really important things. To whatever degree it isn't redundant, well, that's why you need it.
In 2014, the President (equivalent to the Vice Chancellor of an Australian university) of the University of Chicago convened a committee, chaired by highly acclaimed free speech scholar Professor Geoffrey Stone, to draft a statement that would articulate the university’s commitment to “free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation”."Possibly," at least in some cases. However, in other cases, it is clear that that they don't want these principles because they have others.
The university took this step in response to free speech controversies on university campuses in the United States. Examples include disinviting controversial speakers, pressure on faculty to make public apologies for statements some considered offensive, demands for the removal of historic statues or monuments, and the existence of campus speech codes which prohibit students from engaging in hate speech on the ground of race, sexuality, or gender.
The Chicago statement recognises free speech on campus as an issue that goes to the core mission of the university as a place of learning. It defends free and open inquiry in all matters, and guarantees the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.
It also recognises that freedom of speech does not mean people can say whatever they want, wherever they want. It permits restrictions on speech that violates the law, is defamatory, threatens or harasses, invades privacy or confidentiality, or is incompatible with the functioning of a university.
The statement is a well-articulated and clear enunciation of three things:
1) the importance of freedom of speech to learning
2) the recognition that free speech must have limits
3) the articulation that any such limits must be carefully and narrowly circumscribed.
As of February 2018 the Chicago statement had been adopted by 34 other universities in the US. But this still leaves around 1,600 universities that have not signed up, possibly because their existing policies already support the same views.
"Legally Barred"
I suppose the Eighth Amendment probably forbids the court from taking the appropriate measures here.
The court is so far going along with this idiocy, if I am correct to believe that 'legally barred' means that some previous court proceeding is the source of this restriction.
A Texas father is fighting for his son in court after pushing back on his ex-wife's claim that their six-year-old is a transgender girl.This poor kid. Mommy and daddy are fighting; mommy really wishes he weren't a boy. He's six. No adult should be doing this to him.
According to court documents, the young boy only dresses as a girl when he's with his mother, who has enrolled him in first-grade as a female named "Luna." The father, however, contends that his son consistently chooses to wear boys' clothes, "violently refuses to wear girl’s clothes at my home," and identifies as a boy when he is with him.
The Federalist reports that the mother has accused the father of child abuse in their divorce proceedings "for not affirming James as transgender" and is looking to strip the dad of his parental rights. "She is also seeking to require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight," the report adds.
The father has been legally barred from speaking to his child about sexuality and gender from a scientific or religious perspective and from dressing his son in boys' clothes; instead, he has to offer both girls' and boys' outfits. The boy consistently refuses to wear dresses, according to the father.
The boy was diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a gender transition therapist the mother, a pediatrician, chose for her son to see. According to the therapist's notes, the boy chose to identify as a girl when he was in sessions alone with his mother; alternatively, he chose to identify as a boy when he was in sessions alone with his father.
The court is so far going along with this idiocy, if I am correct to believe that 'legally barred' means that some previous court proceeding is the source of this restriction.
An Aristotelian Proof
I'm posting this here because I want to watch it, but I don't have an hour right now to devote to it. If any of you get to it before I have time, feel free to post thoughts (or questions -- I do have some training here if you're not familiar with Aristotelian thinking and want to walk through it).
Wretchard on the Coming Storm
If it sounds a lot like shadow banning and blacklisting its because it is. As Tyler Grant notes in the Hill the basic algorithms behind the Chinese social scoring system and Western hate speech systems are essentially the same. "It’s tempting to think this government overreach is purely reserved to China, after all they did just forfeit significant freedom by electing Xi Jinping president for life. This is incorrect thinking. The rest of the world is steps away from trailing the Chinese into a surveillance state."Read that last with Thomas' bit, just below.The U.K. fines and even imprisons people for hate speech or speech deemed abhorrent to the prevailing norms of society. The U.S. is not far behind. Last week, a Manhattan judge ruled a bar can toss Trump supporters for their political viewpoints. A recent proliferation of politically motivated boycotts seeks to punish "bad" viewpoints; protesters are eager to shout down incorrect speech. In this political climate, it’s not difficult to imagine businesses or the government assessing social benefit or worth based upon a variety of factors including political speech.With incredible data collection, the plumbing is already in place for such a system to take hold. Our tech companies catalogue large quantities of data on everyone. As we saw with Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 election, this data can be used to steer particular viewpoints; it’s not a far cry to imagine information being used to control viewpoints.
Tricking People Into Changing Their Political Opinions?
Choice blindness, eh?
The experiment relies on a phenomenon known as choice blindness. Choice blindness was discovered in 2005 by a team of Swedish researchers. They presented participants with two photos of faces and asked participants to choose the photo they thought was more attractive, and then handed participants that photo. Using a clever trick inspired by stage magic, when participants received the photo it had been switched to the person not chosen by the participant—the less attractive photo. Remarkably, most participants accepted this card as their own choice and then proceeded to give arguments for why they had chosen that face in the first place. This revealed a striking mismatch between our choices and our ability to rationalize outcomes. This same finding has since been replicated in various domains including taste for jam, financial decisions, and eye-witness testimony.While it is remarkable that people can be fooled into picking an attractive photo or a sweet jam in the moment, we wondered whether it would be possible to use this false-feedback to alter political beliefs in a way that would stand the test of time.In our experiment, we first gave false-feedback about their choices, but this time concerning actual political questions (e.g., climate taxes on consumer goods). Participants were then asked to state their views a second time that same day, and again one week later. The results were striking. Participants’ responses were shifted considerably in the direction of the manipulation. For instance, those who originally had favoured higher taxes were more likely to be undecided or even opposed to it.
Norse Arts and Crafts
A History piece on a find at Ribe, including wooden "'solid houses'" dating back no later than the 720s," and "telling discoveries that include jewelry, coins, and a lyre, a stringed musical instrument."
The journalist who wrote the piece is no scholar, though.
The journalist who wrote the piece is no scholar, though.
How the Vikings went from building a complex and seemingly stable society to gaining their status as brash and hostile warriors is still unknown.It's not at all unknown. P. H. Sawyer's Kings and Vikings gives an account of how it happened. The stabilizing society gave rise to stronger kings who pushed out the wilder elements, so that the original 'Vikings' were the bandits and warlords that these stronger kings were driving out of Norway and Denmark and Sweden. The success these raiders found in places like England and France provided the fodder for the later, larger-scale "Viking" raids by later generations of such kings. The story is fairly well known, and evident in sources from the sagas to the Heimskringla.
"Permanently (If Need Be)"
I can't imagine it's more than just words, this threat to close the Mexican border "permanently." I assume it means "for as long as necessary to make the economic pain effective." There's too much money to be made for Americans trading across that border for the closure to really be even long-lasting.
Trump's extravagant threat doesn't even place at the top of the rankings for extravagant border-closing threats. The silver standard for these border threats, is Saudi Arabia's.
Oh, by the way, the Border Patrol used pepper spray / tear gas under Obama too. I mean, it's literally their job to stop things like this. It's the whole reason we pay for them to exist year after year.
Trump's extravagant threat doesn't even place at the top of the rankings for extravagant border-closing threats. The silver standard for these border threats, is Saudi Arabia's.
Saudi Arabia could consider a proposal to dig a maritime canal along the kingdom’s border with Qatar, turning the peninsula-nation into an island and transforming its only land border into a military zone and nuclear waste site, state-linked Saudi newspapers reported Monday.The gold standard remains McArthur's DPRK/ROK border creation proposal. It started with 30-50 nuclear bombs, followed by a pincer movement invasion to sow a belt of radioactive Cobalt, creating a very firm border indeed.
Oh, by the way, the Border Patrol used pepper spray / tear gas under Obama too. I mean, it's literally their job to stop things like this. It's the whole reason we pay for them to exist year after year.
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