Just don't get hit. The last place you want to be right now is the hospital.
Pandemics and the Vikings
Why not tie two of our current interests together? Here is a brief historic survey of Viking encounters (and near misses) with grand-scale historic disease.
Ode to Totalitarianism
An associate professor of music wants you to know how much safer he felt in China.
In fact the United States has managed, without a central authority -- in spite of the failures of our central government's ossified bureaucracies -- to lock itself down nearly as effectively as China. Schools and universities are canceling classes or shifting to online models for a while; sports leagues are forgoing millions in revenue to shut down their games. Nobody's making us do it, but we've done it anyway.
It does require more of us as citizens. I spent a lot of last week contacting government officials to urge appropriate action. And you can't just call the Federal elected officials: the real decisions are being made at the local and state level right now. Our local school board fought tooth and nail to avoid closing, as did the state department of education. As of yesterday afternoon they reaffirmed their intent to resume classes Monday morning, though the admitted that no one would be required to come given that the governor has declared a state of emergency. Finally, today, they gave in and canceled classes for the rest of the month.
Now we've got other problems, and we'll have to each do our part to get through it. But we are getting through it, and we are doing it ourselves, like free men and women.
Before you decide that a totalitarian central government is the way to make you feel safe, too, you should reflect on what they're doing to the people they don't like.
Maybe you're safer being free, too. Although I suppose an associate professor of music who was willing to speak well of the regime might have a high social credit score, you never can be sure what your masters will decide to dislike. The Cultural Revolution came for all sorts of intellectuals, just as it is now the Muslim minority that is being sent to the chopping block.
In China, the obligation to isolate felt shared and the public changed their habits almost immediately. Sterilization, cleanliness and social distancing were prioritized by everyone at all times. Rightly or wrongly, the Chinese state’s heavy-handed approach seemed to work.What's with the scare quotes around "rights"? Was the intention to suggest that many things we think of as rights aren't really, like the 'right' to go out to eat at a restaurant? Or was the intent to suggest that freedom of movement, independence, protections from having the government seize your property, these sorts of things aren't really rights? The piece is ambiguous.
In contrast, individual liberty is the engine that drives American exceptionalism. There are certainly valid questions about how much of it to sacrifice in the name of the public good, but our laissez-faire attitude, prioritization of personal freedom and utter lack of government leadership have left Americans confused and exposed.
Particularly troubling has been the extent to which it has felt like high-risk residents such as ourselves have had to shoulder the burden for stopping the spread of the disease by being the only ones to go into isolation. There are lessons to be learned from the Chinese people if not its leadership, including that everybody must accept their own responsibility, vulnerability and complicity — sacrificing “rights” for the collective good — or many of us will die.
In fact the United States has managed, without a central authority -- in spite of the failures of our central government's ossified bureaucracies -- to lock itself down nearly as effectively as China. Schools and universities are canceling classes or shifting to online models for a while; sports leagues are forgoing millions in revenue to shut down their games. Nobody's making us do it, but we've done it anyway.
It does require more of us as citizens. I spent a lot of last week contacting government officials to urge appropriate action. And you can't just call the Federal elected officials: the real decisions are being made at the local and state level right now. Our local school board fought tooth and nail to avoid closing, as did the state department of education. As of yesterday afternoon they reaffirmed their intent to resume classes Monday morning, though the admitted that no one would be required to come given that the governor has declared a state of emergency. Finally, today, they gave in and canceled classes for the rest of the month.
Now we've got other problems, and we'll have to each do our part to get through it. But we are getting through it, and we are doing it ourselves, like free men and women.
Before you decide that a totalitarian central government is the way to make you feel safe, too, you should reflect on what they're doing to the people they don't like.
Maybe you're safer being free, too. Although I suppose an associate professor of music who was willing to speak well of the regime might have a high social credit score, you never can be sure what your masters will decide to dislike. The Cultural Revolution came for all sorts of intellectuals, just as it is now the Muslim minority that is being sent to the chopping block.
What was their job again?
As we sort through the simultaneous complaints that the President is an autocratic tyrant who's failing to take personal control of enough important American institutions, I turn again to Doc Zero (a/k/a John Hayward):
I also wouldn't fault Trump too much for being surprised to learn the system actually has roadblocks that make quick and effective epidemic response difficult. Would you think, upon succeeding the president in charge during the H1N1 epidemic, that would be the case?
The fascinating thing about the Democrats' "Trump cut CDC funding" lie is that none of them bothered to actually READ the unimplemented White House budget proposal in question. It talked about CDC getting distracted from its core mission by excessive staff and bureaucratic creep.
Everything I've seen so far buttresses that analysis. There really is no excuse for a gigantic government swimming in money, bursting with personnel, and top-heavy with management to be paralyzed unless the chief executive comes in and micro-manages every agency.
Red Flags in Maryland
A police shooting.
A Maryland man who was shot and killed by a police officer was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house, an attorney for the 21-year-old man’s family said Friday. The man's girlfriend was also wounded....
The warrant that police obtained to search the Potomac home Lemp shared with his parents and 19-year-old brother doesn’t mention any “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, Lemp’s relatives said in a statement released Friday by their lawyers. Nobody in the house that morning had a criminal record, the statement adds.
"Exiled for the good of the realm"
I don't know about you guys, but I haven't had that much success getting useful diagnoses out of doctors, other than in really obscure cases requiring specialized tests. No matter how many doctors roll their eyes at "Dr. Google," most diagnoses occur at home. This flow-chart may be helpful:
It might be better to organize it differently, though. The main thing is whether there's fever or not, but evidently fever tends to appear with a suite of other symptoms: cough, fatigue, and prostration (but apparently not sneezing or a runny nose). If you're in this suite, the big difference between novel coronavirus and ordinary flu is said to be a distinct shortness of breath. Presumably this means the subjective feeling that accompanies a low pulse-ox, something I've experienced only once but won't soon forget.
If there's no fever, but you're sneezing and your nose is running, you probably have either allergies (especially if your eyes itch but your chest is OK) or a cold (especially if your chest is "uncomfortable" but your eyes don't itch).
I remain uncertain whether I've ever had the true flu. What do you call it when there's a little fever but not a lot, some weakness but not a huge amount, and a stuffy nose that turns into a moderate cough that goes on for a week or more? Is that what they mean by "mild chest discomfort"? Maybe all I've ever had were common colds. Maybe I don't need to know, since there's no useful way to treat either them or the flu, and my immune system is going to do its thing regardless of the state of my conscious knowledge. You treat the symptoms if possible, rest, and wait it out. This is the first time I can remember particularly needing to care, since putting what may be an ordinary seasonal cold or flu into the "coronavirus" category would mean a lot more urgency about either quarantine or--nightmare scenario--pushing the panic button and heading to an ER or ICU for respiratory support.
We're self-quarantining anyway, or at least socially isolating. It's the only useful way I know to do my part to keep the spread down, either to "flatten curve" in order to lessen the acute strain on medical facilities, or if possible to bring R0 under 1.0 so as to contain the spread completely.
My husband has just brought my attention to a much-needed distinction made by someone called "Ciaran's Artisanal ****posting": self-isolation is boring and clinical, suggesting that you're following the orders of a government, and a sure way for no one to notice your effort. Being "exiled for the good of the realm," however, is mysterious and sexy and will lead everyone to wonder what you did to deserve it.
It might be better to organize it differently, though. The main thing is whether there's fever or not, but evidently fever tends to appear with a suite of other symptoms: cough, fatigue, and prostration (but apparently not sneezing or a runny nose). If you're in this suite, the big difference between novel coronavirus and ordinary flu is said to be a distinct shortness of breath. Presumably this means the subjective feeling that accompanies a low pulse-ox, something I've experienced only once but won't soon forget.
If there's no fever, but you're sneezing and your nose is running, you probably have either allergies (especially if your eyes itch but your chest is OK) or a cold (especially if your chest is "uncomfortable" but your eyes don't itch).
I remain uncertain whether I've ever had the true flu. What do you call it when there's a little fever but not a lot, some weakness but not a huge amount, and a stuffy nose that turns into a moderate cough that goes on for a week or more? Is that what they mean by "mild chest discomfort"? Maybe all I've ever had were common colds. Maybe I don't need to know, since there's no useful way to treat either them or the flu, and my immune system is going to do its thing regardless of the state of my conscious knowledge. You treat the symptoms if possible, rest, and wait it out. This is the first time I can remember particularly needing to care, since putting what may be an ordinary seasonal cold or flu into the "coronavirus" category would mean a lot more urgency about either quarantine or--nightmare scenario--pushing the panic button and heading to an ER or ICU for respiratory support.
We're self-quarantining anyway, or at least socially isolating. It's the only useful way I know to do my part to keep the spread down, either to "flatten curve" in order to lessen the acute strain on medical facilities, or if possible to bring R0 under 1.0 so as to contain the spread completely.
My husband has just brought my attention to a much-needed distinction made by someone called "Ciaran's Artisanal ****posting": self-isolation is boring and clinical, suggesting that you're following the orders of a government, and a sure way for no one to notice your effort. Being "exiled for the good of the realm," however, is mysterious and sexy and will lead everyone to wonder what you did to deserve it.
Isolation Diary 2
So far I'm only doing these on the days when I break isolation. Today I went down to town for what I think will be the last time for a very long time. I've managed to arrange for everyone else on the property to stop having reasons to leave, but for one more trip, until the state of emergency is lifted or we run out of food. We have lots of food. Tomorrow I'll bottle up a few gallons of mead and get another batch started, so alcohol won't be a problem for a long time either.
In principle we could ride out two months here. In practice, I'll probably ride out when the weather is nice. One can hardly get sick on a motorcycle, as long as riding in the clean air is all one does. If we run short of anything I can make limited stops to pick up what we need and put it in the saddlebags, washing my hands immediately after leaving any stores with soap and bottled water.
The novel I'm editing is better than I remembered. It's really pretty good. I am removing a lot of commas, and smoothing some dialogue -- it wasn't bad before, but it sounded like the Medieval sources rather than like anything anyone would know how to hear today. Still, I'm pretty happy with it. I'll never write anything this good again; academic training has killed the instinct for beauty that I once possessed.
Ah, well. Perhaps 'killed' is too strong. There will be a lot of time for meditation in the coming weeks. Maybe I can recover something of what I once had.
In principle we could ride out two months here. In practice, I'll probably ride out when the weather is nice. One can hardly get sick on a motorcycle, as long as riding in the clean air is all one does. If we run short of anything I can make limited stops to pick up what we need and put it in the saddlebags, washing my hands immediately after leaving any stores with soap and bottled water.
The novel I'm editing is better than I remembered. It's really pretty good. I am removing a lot of commas, and smoothing some dialogue -- it wasn't bad before, but it sounded like the Medieval sources rather than like anything anyone would know how to hear today. Still, I'm pretty happy with it. I'll never write anything this good again; academic training has killed the instinct for beauty that I once possessed.
Ah, well. Perhaps 'killed' is too strong. There will be a lot of time for meditation in the coming weeks. Maybe I can recover something of what I once had.
A Series of Implausible Arguments
Robert Fisk is still around, it turns out.
"The Saudi royal family appear unaware of the dangers of settling scores among themselves."
I would guess there are no better experts in the world on the subject than the Saudi royal family, but carry on dude.
"The Saudi royal family appear unaware of the dangers of settling scores among themselves."
I would guess there are no better experts in the world on the subject than the Saudi royal family, but carry on dude.
Daytona Bike Week Canceled
Really everything is likely to be canceled that can be, but you know it's serious when Daytona cancels.
Some appropriate music.
Some appropriate music.
Killing An Admiral From Time to Time
Apropos of the last post, and because it happens to be the anniversary, a sea story.
ON MARCH 14, 1757, Royal Navy Vice Admiral John Byng boarded his flagship HMS Monarch for what would be the last time.We live in a softer age, for now.
As the 52-year-old officer waited on the quarterdeck in the company of nine marine guards, instructions were passed to all the men-of-war at anchor nearby in Spithead to dispatch their officers to the 74-gun ship of the line to witness the spectacle that had been planned.
As the clock struck twelve, a captain by the name of John Montagu stepped forward from the small crowd that had assembled on the Monarch to inform Byng that it was time — the admiral’s execution was at hand....
Upon learning of the execution, the French writer, philosopher and playwright Voltaire satirically wrote that the British needed to occasionally execute an admiral from time to time, “in order to encourage the others.”
Although his comments were written as a form of mockery, surprisingly, the observation was entirely accurate. Byng’s role in the Minorca fiasco led to what was darkly termed in the Royal Navy the “Byng Principle,” which meant that “nothing is to be undertaken where there is risk or danger.”
This sardonic term served as a cautionary reminder to naval officers of the sort of conduct that should be avoided in battle. And just or not, Byng’s death was to instill in them an aggressive fighting spirit that would succeed in turning the war in favour of Britain.
When This Is Over, We Hang the Bureaucrats
After problems arose with the C.D.C.’s test, officials could have switched to using successful tests that other countries were already using. But the officials refused to do so, essentially because it would have required changing bureaucratic procedures.So what can we replace the CDC with that is not a bureaucracy, or at least not a government bureaucracy?
The federal government could also have eased regulations on American hospitals and laboratories, to allow them to create and manufacture their own tests, as Melissa Miller of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine told The Washington Post. But federal officials did not do so for weeks. The Times’s Sheri Fink and Mike Baker reported this week about a Seattle lab with a promising test that was blocked by “existing regulations and red tape” while “other countries ramped up much earlier and faster.”
Virus Threat? Ban Guns!
You can tell when people aren’t taking a crisis seriously when they try to shoehorn irrelevant policy preferences into their so-called “disaster” planning. I hear Pelosi tried to slip abortion funding into the Federal plan, and this mayor has decided to assume executive authority to void the Second Amendment.
UPDATE: California governor to "commandeer property" to fight the virus.
UPDATE: NYC mayor says this is the time to nationalize factories and industries.
UPDATE: California governor to "commandeer property" to fight the virus.
UPDATE: NYC mayor says this is the time to nationalize factories and industries.
Texans don't get it
The "NewNeo" blog continues to amuse, particularly the comments section. Commenter OldTexan weighs in on the host's thoughts about the loss of meaning of terms like exponential and existential:
My feeling about the existential stuff can best be summed up with [an] experience I had in the Army when about the only General I ever saw was touring our top secret facility in Germany where we did electronic eavesdropping on the various Commie Countries to the East. He stopped to talk to once of our men working a multiple radio intercept position inside a room tucked into the back of a building, free standing inside and old Luftwaffe hanger. He said, "Son, where are you from?" and the reply was, "Texas, Sir!" and then the General said, "Anything I can do to help you?" At that time the Texan took off his headset, we did not have to come to attention because we were supposed to keep working, the Texan stood up and said very clearly and kind of loud, "Sir, Existentialism, Sir I just don’t get it!"
Fix it so I can go back to sleep
John Hayward nails the irritable irrationality of someone woken from a sound sleep to a threat demanding immediate inconvenient action:
Focused intently on the suddenly urgent, all-consuming crisis thrust before our bleary eyes, we lose our senses of time and proportion. We want an immediate solution to the danger that jolted us awake. We eagerly signal to each other that we're fully awake and engaged now.
But we suspect maybe OTHERS are still asleep, still numb to the real danger, foolishly taking risks and making mistakes that could jeopardize everyone else. Our instinct to raise the general alarm level makes us amplify bad news and get angry at anyone who isn't at Defcon 1.
Few want to discuss proportionality during the fearful days after we are jolted awake. We want to spread the alarm and focus on this new terrible thing to the exclusion of all else. We want it to be over fast. We want to go back to sleep.
* * *
We should learn not to sleep so deeply between red-alert crises. We should demand more focus and less mission creep from the agencies that are supposed to be prepared for them. We should begin reacting judiciously to threats before they cross the horizon.
Most of all, we should learn there are costs and benefits to every action, and to inaction. Rationally balancing them against each other is difficult both in times of apathy and white-hot panic. If we learn to do it better when we're not panicking, we'll panic less often.
The Return of Legends
As the stable world seems less stable, remember that it has happened before.
We should be startled if we were quietly reading a prosaic modern novel, and somewhere in the middle it turned without warning into a fairy tale. We should be surprised if one of the spinsters in Cranford, after tidily sweeping the room with a broom, were to fly away on a broomstick. Our attention would be arrested if one of Jane Austen's young ladies who had just met a dragoon were to walk a little further and meet a dragon.According to the legends, those were the great times.
Yet something very like this extraordinary transition takes place in British history at the end of the purely Roman period. We have to do with rational and almost mechanical accounts of encampment and engineering, of a busy bureaucracy and occasional frontier wars, quite modern in their efficiency and inefficiency; and then all of a sudden we are reading of wandering bells and wizard lances, of wars against men as tall as trees or as short as toadstools. The soldier of civilization is no longer fighting with Goths but with goblins; the land becomes a labyrinth of faerie towns unknown to history; and scholars can suggest but cannot explain how a Roman ruler or a Welsh chieftain towers up in the twilight as the awful and unbegotten Arthur.
The Liberation of Sarah Palin
If I were to guess, I'd say that Ms. Palin was always a Sir Mixalot fan but long felt she had to keep that aspect of her personality private. Now that her political career is over, well, she's free at last.
That looks like a completely ridiculous TV show, but I have gotten the impression that such things are common now.
That looks like a completely ridiculous TV show, but I have gotten the impression that such things are common now.
Grand Bargains
In general I'm opposed to involving the Federal government in anything, or for Congress legislating outside of its very clear Article I Section 8 duties. That said, a global pandemic is the best argument for a coherent approach across many normally divergent sectors. Since you go to war with the government you have, and ours is hyper-partisan and nearly nonfunctional, a bargain may be the only way to obtain the goods we need.
Strong high borders, closed schools, ways to keep people from losing their homes or places of living during times when we ask everyone to stay home; lots is going to have to happen quickly, and for a month at least (though likely not forever). We can get this under control, but time is of the essence.
Strong high borders, closed schools, ways to keep people from losing their homes or places of living during times when we ask everyone to stay home; lots is going to have to happen quickly, and for a month at least (though likely not forever). We can get this under control, but time is of the essence.
Free Spirits
Part one and two of a study urging free market reforms for North Carolina's hard liquor industry. North Carolina has one of the most vibrant microbrewery and winery markets going, but hard liquor here is still controlled by "Alcoholic Beverage Control" councils operated not by the state but by 140 local governments. As you might expect, that leads to non-optimal results.
Did you know that North Carolina used to be the nation’s leader in locally owned and operated distilleries? It’s true. In 1904 the state had 745 registered distilleries, 540 of which were operating. And they were all outlawed, an entire industry destroyed, by a series of laws culminating in voters passing the first statewide prohibition in the South in 1908.It won't be the last industry destroyed in the name of "progress," if certain people get their way.
The Eagles Come Home
SECDEF issues major travel restrictions, at the same time as our withdrawal from Afghanistan begins. I think these are 150th Cavalry Regiment soldiers, from the West Virginia National Guard but assigned to the 30th Armored Brigade that is mostly built around North Carolina National Guard units. If so, I was with this unit for a while during their deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom IV in 2009.
Isolation Diary
I'm inclined to isolation on most occasions, so it wasn't too shocking to realize I had been an early adopter of the 'social distancing' method being recommended these days. I left my property today for the first time since Saturday, to go down to the county dump to clear the ordinary household trash out of my place. I intended also to check the post office box in the 'town' nearest the house, which chiefly consists of that post office and a gas station. So I expected no social interactions at all. In fact I had two: I ran into my Mexican friend (born in Guadalajara, married these days to a Cherokee wife -- a real one from the nearby reservation, not the Warren type). I also ran into the guy who owns the gas station, who is a friend of mine because he and I both own off-roading Jeeps and enjoy that culture.
Therefore I shook two hands in spite of the elevated risk of doing so; but I still have plenty of hand sanitizer. The wife did her prepping a month and a half ago when the craziness was just on display in China, figuring it would get out this way sooner or later. After that I came home.
In many ways I'm ideally placed for a long isolation. I have a great number of books, plenty of supplies, still lots of firewood even though winter is just ending. There are springs on the property, and not many people around in any case. If it weren't for the need to make money to pay all those bills I could stay up here a very long time without coming down.
Of course my wife and another relative still have business in town, so they may bring the thing home in spite of however much I'm prepared to sit up here. Like Willie Nelson, 'taking it home to Connie and the kids.'
I'm editing a novel I wrote some years ago in my spare time. Maybe if it turns out all right I'll try to publish it when this is all over.
Therefore I shook two hands in spite of the elevated risk of doing so; but I still have plenty of hand sanitizer. The wife did her prepping a month and a half ago when the craziness was just on display in China, figuring it would get out this way sooner or later. After that I came home.
In many ways I'm ideally placed for a long isolation. I have a great number of books, plenty of supplies, still lots of firewood even though winter is just ending. There are springs on the property, and not many people around in any case. If it weren't for the need to make money to pay all those bills I could stay up here a very long time without coming down.
Of course my wife and another relative still have business in town, so they may bring the thing home in spite of however much I'm prepared to sit up here. Like Willie Nelson, 'taking it home to Connie and the kids.'
I'm editing a novel I wrote some years ago in my spare time. Maybe if it turns out all right I'll try to publish it when this is all over.
Feel the Bern
In spite of sequential drubbings by the Democratic machine, Bernie will stay in and force Biden to debate.
Ready for anything
I guess this quantum mechanics prof had gotten one too many anguished calls from nervous students:
Well, shoot, I can't seem to embed a legible version, but you can read it here.
Well, shoot, I can't seem to embed a legible version, but you can read it here.
Hazard is the spice of life
More and more of my daily diet of online perspectives consists of the panic/don't-panic debate. I enjoyed this lengthy excerpt from the comments section at thenewneo.com:
Arthur Koestler wrote about what he called the Tragic and the Trivial planes of life. As explained by his friend, the writer and fighter pilot Richard Hillary:
“K has a theory for this. He believes there are two planes of existence which he calls vie tragique and vie triviale. Usually we move on the trivial plane, but occasionally in moments of elation or danger, we find ourselves transferred to the plane of the vie tragique, with its non-commonsense, cosmic perspective. When we are on the trivial plane, the realities of the other appear as nonsense–as overstrung nerves and so on. When we live on the tragic plane, the realities of the other are shallow, frivolous, frivolous, trifling. But in exceptional circumstances, for instance if someone has to live through a long stretch of time in physical danger, one is placed, as it were, on the intersection line of the two planes; a curious situation which is a kind of tightrope-walking on one’s nerves…I think he is right.”I think the attraction to ultimate catastrophes…whether the assumed flooding due to Climate Change, or the danger of America being taken over by the Ku Klux Klan, or the exaggeration of the very real dangers of coronavirus…is related to this. People who live entirely on Koestler’s Trivial Plane, looking for a little connection to Ultimate Things.
Restoring Civility to Office
A transcript of the genteel discussion Joe Biden had with a voter today. It's going to be a great election season, isn't it?
A Suspense of Mortgage
Italy, having placed sixty million under quarantine, takes a step to help make sure they don't thereby become homeless.
Class and Aristotle
Aristotle's view only gets mentioned in passing here, so I wanted to elaborate a bit on it along the way to illuminating the rest of the argument.
But what Aristotle is calling oligarchs are also both right and wrong. They are right that they ought to be secure in their property, and not just have the mob empowered to vote themselves the right to take it away. They are wrong, though, in thinking that their superior wealth entails also a superior fitness to lead. Mike Bloomberg is the clearest exemplar of this mistake, and though defeated himself, he is employing his wealth to try to buy armies (of political activists, lawyers, etc) to ensure that his vision is secured by the powers of government. They also buy private security armies, even as they move to disarm the people; in Aristotle's day, sometimes those mercenary forces actually took over the state. For now, the movement simply creates a private right of self defense available only to the rich, while leaving the people disarmed and defenseless against both the power of the state and the criminals (from whom the state offers protection, perhaps, in return for deepened submission). Joe Biden is at this point merely a figurehead for the oligarchs.
Once you understand the sides, we can proceed to the causes of revolution:
Aristotle ponders a third type of government, which he calls aristocracy -- government by the virtuous, he means, rather than by the well-born -- but we are so far away from that form that we need not consider it here.
So let us return to the article about the war between the democrats and the oligarchs, as it is playing out today.
Nevertheless they and their fortunes will survive him, even if he succeeds in rebuilding American advantages.
Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Karl Marx grounded their philosophies in the understanding that there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. The interests of the rich are not our interests. The truths of the rich are not our truths. The lives of the rich are not our lives. Great wealth not only breeds contempt for those who do not have it but it empowers oligarchs to pay armies of lawyers, publicists, politicians, judges, academics and journalists to censure and control public debate and stifle dissent.Aristotle worries that the rich will hire actual armies, as a matter of fact. But he also thinks that both democracy and oligarchy are based on errors. From Politics 5:
Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal. Oligarchy is based on the notion that those who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal; being unequal, that is, in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely. The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things; while the oligarchs, under the idea that they are unequal, claim too much, which is one form of inequality. All these forms of government have a kind of justice, but, tried by an absolute standard, they are faulty; and, therefore, both parties, whenever their share in the government does not accord with their preconceived ideas, stir up revolution.So what Aristotle is calling (small-d) democrats are right about one thing, but wrong about something else; and being wrong, they try to overthrow the government in order to establish an equality of property to go with the equality of rights. This is the kind of movement that Bernie Sanders is leading; we currently are calling this "democratic socialism."
But what Aristotle is calling oligarchs are also both right and wrong. They are right that they ought to be secure in their property, and not just have the mob empowered to vote themselves the right to take it away. They are wrong, though, in thinking that their superior wealth entails also a superior fitness to lead. Mike Bloomberg is the clearest exemplar of this mistake, and though defeated himself, he is employing his wealth to try to buy armies (of political activists, lawyers, etc) to ensure that his vision is secured by the powers of government. They also buy private security armies, even as they move to disarm the people; in Aristotle's day, sometimes those mercenary forces actually took over the state. For now, the movement simply creates a private right of self defense available only to the rich, while leaving the people disarmed and defenseless against both the power of the state and the criminals (from whom the state offers protection, perhaps, in return for deepened submission). Joe Biden is at this point merely a figurehead for the oligarchs.
Once you understand the sides, we can proceed to the causes of revolution:
Revolutions in democracies are generally caused by the intemperance of demagogues, who either in their private capacity lay information against rich men until they compel them to combine (for a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies), or coming forward in public stir up the people against them....We can consider whether Sanders is a demagogue of the democratic type, of a demagogue who is a member of the oligarchy of the 2(b) type. In either case, as Aristotle warned, the rest of the oligarchy has firmly united against him. It was clear since before Super Tuesday that defeating Sanders was at least as important to the oligarchy as defeating Trump; probably much more important, since they know they can survive Trump but may not survive Sanders.
There are two patent causes of revolutions in oligarchies: (1) First, when the oligarchs oppress the people, for then anybody is good enough to be their champion, especially if he be himself a member of the oligarchy...
(2) Of internal causes of revolutions in oligarchies one is the personal rivalry of the oligarchs, which leads them to play the demagogue. Now, the oligarchical demagogue is of two sorts: either (a) he practices upon the oligarchs themselves (for, although the oligarchy are quite a small number, there may be a demagogue among them, as at Athens Charicles' party won power by courting the Thirty, that of Phrynichus by courting the Four Hundred); or (b) the oligarchs may play the demagogue with the people.
Aristotle ponders a third type of government, which he calls aristocracy -- government by the virtuous, he means, rather than by the well-born -- but we are so far away from that form that we need not consider it here.
So let us return to the article about the war between the democrats and the oligarchs, as it is playing out today.
The oligarchs are happy to talk about race. They are happy to talk about sexual identity and gender. They are happy to talk about patriotism. They are happy to talk about religion. They are happy to talk about immigration. They are happy to talk about abortion. They are happy to talk about gun control. They are happy to talk about cultural degeneracy or cultural freedom. They are not happy to talk about class. Race, gender, religion, abortion, immigration, gun control, culture and patriotism are issues used to divide the public, to turn neighbor against neighbor, to fuel virulent hatreds and antagonisms. The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage. There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other.It isn't clear to me that Trump qualifies as a member of the oligarchy in good standing. He is perhaps a 2a type: a demagogue who is practicing on the other oligarchs. But he is so firmly opposed by the members of the so-called Deep State, as well as the rich, that I wonder if he isn't a kind of democrat himself. The objections to his crassness, vulgarity, ugliness of the design of his buildings and his products, these sound like class-based objections: the wealthy and established class sneering at the 'Nouveau riche,' whose manners are unrefined and whose wealth was too recently earned to be respectable. Certainly he is a demagogue, but like Sanders it is debatable which sort he is. In any case, he is an enemy of the established oligarchy, which draws its wealth especially from selling America's advantages for their personal profit. They seek cheap labor through globalization, or through heavy immigration, and through trade deals that benefit their corporations at the expense of the American people. Trump is preying on them, though whether as a democrat or as a 2(a) oligarch is debatable.
Nevertheless they and their fortunes will survive him, even if he succeeds in rebuilding American advantages.
Donald Trump may be a narcissist and a con artist, but he savages the oligarchic elite in his long-winded speeches to the delight of his crowds. He, like Bernie Sanders, speaks about the forbidden topic — class. But Trump, though an embarrassment to the oligarchs, does not, like Sanders, pose a genuine threat to them. Trump will, like all demagogues, incite violence against the vulnerable, widen the cultural and social divides and consolidate tyranny, but he will leave the rich alone. It is Sanders whom the oligarchs fear and hate.There is a great deal more, which you can read if you are interested in the argument as it has developed so far. These are the choices before us; although after today's primaries, it may well be that we are left with a simpler choice. The oligarchs want to recapture all the levers of power; they are sure their superiority in wealth and power implies their superiority, and their fitness to rule over us and tell us how to live our lives. There are no better options on the table, not at least without the kind of revolution that Aristotle warns is likely to come out of this dynamic.
In Praise of Tulsi Gabbard
Acknowledging her flaws, there remains a lot to like about her. Most of what impresses this author will probably strike most of you as reasons not to support her, but read this argument on her alleged support for Assad.
The Assad smear is particularly difficult to unravel. Nothing about our involvement in the Middle East is simple. If we research the Syria trip, we find Gabbard had official permission to travel to Syria, she funded this herself, she traveled with a group that included fellow peace advocate Dennis Kucinich, she met not just with Assad, but with his opponents, community leaders and with citizens. She sought a full picture of events there in an attempt to verify facts to keep us from being lied into another war as we had been with Iraq. The US involvement in Syria is complex. It’s essential to look at the ways our actions have contributed to the problems Syria faces. It’s important to understand not every US action is a help to the people of a given nation. Gabbard understands this as no other candidate. She knows enough to realize we must seek facts before taking action. She consistently points to our constitution and the President’s need to go through Congress when it comes to war.For some reason Tulsi was the designated villain (as SNL named her in one of its skits), perhaps because of her support for Bernie over Hillary in 2016; perhaps because she gutted the Kamala Harris candidacy last year. Perhaps it is for some other reason. The backstab by Pelosi is just part and parcel of how she's been mistreated by her own party. Just last week the DNC changed the rules to keep her out of the debates again, after having changed the rules to ensure that Mike Bloomberg got a chance to debate. He'd have been better off if they hadn't, but Tulsi has been strong when she's made the stage. With only Bernie and Biden left -- and Biden slipping into hostile incoherence -- perhaps they fear to let her back onstage again.
It’s interesting to note Nancy Pelosi met with Assad during the Bush administration and took a great deal of criticism for having met with him. Pelosi responded that all should meet with Assad and any dictator in the interest of diplomacy. Pelosi’s voice was noticeably absent when Gabbard was being smeared for her courageous effort to broker peace. Pelosi remained silent when Harris, Buttigieg and numerous media outlets used the Assad smear to attack Gabbard.
Rest in Peace, Max von Sydow
Swedish actor Max von Sydow has passed on. As the article mentions he had many more famous roles, but he also appeared in the Hall's favorite:
Sword & Sorcery Movie Posters
A blog I'd never heard of before today has a two-part series (one and two) on 1980s Sword & Sorcery movie posters. The artists involved are sometimes good, sometimes bad, as are the movies.
I have seen many of these, partly because I love sword and sorcery as a literary genre and always hope to find a movie that isn't terrible to go with the stories that are often great; but also because I grew up watching Joe Bobb Briggs Drive-In Theater, and developed a taste for quite bad movies of that sort.
After the jump, brief reviews of the ones I have seen.
I have seen many of these, partly because I love sword and sorcery as a literary genre and always hope to find a movie that isn't terrible to go with the stories that are often great; but also because I grew up watching Joe Bobb Briggs Drive-In Theater, and developed a taste for quite bad movies of that sort.
After the jump, brief reviews of the ones I have seen.
Totem or pipe dream?
I've been reading good reviews of a new memoir by Emma Sky about occupied Iraq under the Bush and Obama administrations. It's said to be personally generous and even-handed, so I was interested to read this summing up:
In the 2010 election, with both Sunni and Shia support, the non‑sectarian, nationalist Iraqiya bloc won two seats more than Nouri al‑Maliki’s State of Law coalition. But many MPs were disqualified by the de‑Ba’athification committees, while Maliki demanded a recount and then manoeuvred to stay on as prime minister. To his military’s disgust, Obama ignored the deadlock for two months. Chris Hill, the new US ambassador, told Odierno that Iraq wasn’t ready for democracy and needed a Shia strongman. An opinion poll disagreed: only 14% of Iraqis thought Maliki should stay in power. But the Iranians lobbied hard to preserve him and thus to alienate Iraq from the rest of the Arab world. Obama’s acquiescence led one of Sky’s Iraqi informants to complain: “Either the Americans are stupid or there is a secret deal with Iran” – a view that is still more widespread today. Where Bush made democracy a totem, and thought it could be delivered via occupation, Obama gave up on it entirely. The results of this equally misguided (and orientalist) approach are painfully evident today.Well, where does that leave us? You can't give up on democracy, but you also can't deliver it by occupation. That leaves, perhaps, nation-building without occupation. I'm not asking rhetorically. I genuinely don't understand why some nations, at some times, manage to crawl out of tyranny, or how they stay out of it for a time. The only glimmer of an idea I have is economic and intellectual/religious freedom combined with vigorous communal opposition to theft and violence.
The Wheel of Pain
You will of course recognize this event from the 1982 Conan the Barbarian.
Rogue Fitness paid for a pretty close replica for the Arnold event.
One minute events are very common in Strongman sports. It's often enough that you'll compete in an event that lasts all day, with only 6-10 minutes of actual work all day long. If you're not whipped the next day in spite of having only worked six or ten minutes the previous day, they didn't make the six minutes of work tough enough.
Rogue Fitness paid for a pretty close replica for the Arnold event.
One minute events are very common in Strongman sports. It's often enough that you'll compete in an event that lasts all day, with only 6-10 minutes of actual work all day long. If you're not whipped the next day in spite of having only worked six or ten minutes the previous day, they didn't make the six minutes of work tough enough.
A Strongman Moment
This guy may have more in the tank, but we can’t test it because no bigger Atlas stone actually exists.
The fellow is from Scotland, the heritage home of many (though not all) of the great stone-lifting strength sports. He is a Cimmerian, as you can see.
The fellow is from Scotland, the heritage home of many (though not all) of the great stone-lifting strength sports. He is a Cimmerian, as you can see.
Chili recipes?
So as I've said before, I'm still reading through the old VC archives (working backwards in time) and I came across this comment in one thread:
Chili -- although what I find to be a "comfort food" might put some of our readers into the hospital. :)And I suddenly was very interested to know what Grim's chili contains as I am a committed "hot head" when it comes to spicy food (or I need to be committed, one of the two).
Posted by: Grim at September 16, 2008 04:50 PM
Living History
During the Cobra Gold exercise -- apparently going on in spite of the Coronavirus, unlike exercises with South Korea -- American pilots are donning historic headgear. In the photo of one of the examples they're replicating, Will Koenitzer is wearing not only the "Saigon Cowboy" hat but tiger stripe camo and sporting what looks to me like a Smith & Wesson N-Frame revolver on his hip.
The contemporary Special Forces dudes are also wearing a form of tiger stripe camo, which I have been seeing them do lately. That was another thing that dates to the Vietnam era. In movies as well; in addition to John Wayne in The Green Berets, in Apocalypse Now the Army officer sent on the special mission wears it.
The contemporary Special Forces dudes are also wearing a form of tiger stripe camo, which I have been seeing them do lately. That was another thing that dates to the Vietnam era. In movies as well; in addition to John Wayne in The Green Berets, in Apocalypse Now the Army officer sent on the special mission wears it.
But That's Just When You Need Guns the Most!
Reason Magazine: "She Said He Said He Saw Demons. Then He Had to Give Up His Guns."
[A judge issued orders]...which authorizes the suspension of a person's Second Amendment rights when he is deemed a threat to himself or others. All three were ex parte orders, meaning they were issued without giving Kevin Morgan a chance to rebut the allegations against him.That's all very well, but what happens when the police roll up, armed and in numbers, to disarm someone they've been told is a madman seeing demons? He gets his day in court eventually, if he's still alive.
But when it was time for a judge to decide whether the initial gun confiscation order, which was limited to 14 days, should be extended for a year, Morgan got a hearing, and the lurid picture painted by his wife disintegrated. By the end of the hearing, in an extraordinary turn of events unlike anything you are likely to see in a courtroom drama, the lawyer representing the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, which was seeking the final order, conceded that he had not met the law's evidentiary standard, and the judge agreed.
This bizarre case vividly illustrates why legal representation and meaningful judicial review are necessary to protect gun owners from unsubstantiated complaints under red flag laws, which 17 states and the District of Columbia have enacted. But it also shows that police and prosecutors, who in Florida are the only parties authorized to file red flag petitions, are not necessarily diligent about investigating allegations by people who may have an ax to grind.
Goodbye, Mike
I spent a lot of 'ink' on Warren, but by far my least favorite of the candidates was Mike Bloomberg. I'm not sure how much of my attention he deserves, but I'm greatly pleased to see his departure from the pursuit of even more power than his endless billions give him.
The Failing New York Times
With the collapse of the Warren campaign, both of the candidates the NYT endorsed are now out of the Democratic primary.
If Times readers still want to vote for a woman to run against Trump, it's ok: Tulsi Gabbard is still standing tall. She also won a delegate in American Samoa, so she might make the debate stage next time!
UPDATE: The Atlantic publishes a piece by Elaine Godfrey with five theories for Warren's fall. Sexism is theory number five.
That said, I do think sexism played the crucial role in her downfall. Specifically, I think it was her campaign's collusion with CNN to forward an unsupported accusation of sexism against Bernie Sanders. Her numbers began to crash as people on the Left experienced the kind of astonishment that so many of us on the right experienced during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. They didn't notice then because they were prepared to believe any kind of slander against a right-leaning SCOTUS nominee, but this time they saw through to the nastiness, the dishonesty, and the unfairness of trying to destroy the career of a man they admired via accusations of sexism fielded without any evidence whatsoever.
The very people she needed to vote for her didn't believe her -- perhaps in part because she has a long legacy of proven false statements about her own biography -- and they couldn't believe she'd try to destroy the reputation of a man who -- by their lights -- has lived with moral clarity and distinction for many decades. Bernie was arrested with the civil rights marchers; Bernie was always on the forefront of every issue they cared about. He's been a loyal husband to a loyal wife, advanced the causes of many women in politics, and she was prepared to destroy him anyway in pursuit of power.
If that was their judgment, they were right to drive her out of the path of power. If they were right about her, she's the kind of person who shouldn't have power.
UPDATE: Jeff Jacoby points out that 76% of women in Massachusetts voted against Warren. Democratic women voters, even, as Mike D points out in the comments.
If Times readers still want to vote for a woman to run against Trump, it's ok: Tulsi Gabbard is still standing tall. She also won a delegate in American Samoa, so she might make the debate stage next time!
UPDATE: The Atlantic publishes a piece by Elaine Godfrey with five theories for Warren's fall. Sexism is theory number five.
Sexism in politics is like Whack-a-Mole, right? Every cycle, it shows up in a new way. We dealt with the “likability” issue [with Warren] pretty quickly. Now it’s “electability.” Every data point that we have says women can win—in 2018, women won all over the country—and yet we keep asking this question. The conversation becomes really problematic for a candidate who’s trying to make [the] case about what kind of agenda she wants to set, what kind of policies she wants to have.I cannot imagine that a deep dive into the news coverage the Warren campaign got will show that it was less than glowing. I mean, she was endorsed by the NYT! She was treated as brilliant and intellectual and the one candidate who really could formulate solutions to the nation's great problems by journalists from the left to what passes for the middle. Unlike Joe Biden, she had many passionate supporters including among journalists who provided in-kind donations with positive coverage. Joltin' Joe seems to have mostly machine support -- but having a machine behind you, whether the Clinton machine or Obama's Chicago machine, is the real route to power in the national-level Democratic party, and they're united behind Joe.
The biggest issue this year is the double standard, where we hold women candidates to different standards than we hold the men. It’s very clear from the Medicare for All conversation that we expected and demanded more of [Warren] than we did the male candidates, and it hurt her. That was happening right as she was rising. As late as [last] week, Bernie Sanders [was] saying, I still can’t tell you every nickel and dime [about how to pay for his Medicare for All plan], and everybody’s like, All right. Well, you know, it’s about priorities. I’m not saying we should treat Bernie Sanders differently. I’m saying we should treat Elizabeth Warren the same.
She either outright won all [the debates] or performed really well. But you didn’t see wall-to-wall coverage the next day of what that would mean for her campaign and whether the momentum was going to come in. Where she had victories, they were not celebrated as loudly as the men[’s] were, and where she had defeats, it was seen as an inevitable character flaw as opposed to a bump in the road.
There were three tickets out of Iowa until a woman got the third one. I am very interested to see a deep dive into [news-coverage] quantity and quality once this is all over, and it’s pretty obvious that the women just didn’t get the same.
That said, I do think sexism played the crucial role in her downfall. Specifically, I think it was her campaign's collusion with CNN to forward an unsupported accusation of sexism against Bernie Sanders. Her numbers began to crash as people on the Left experienced the kind of astonishment that so many of us on the right experienced during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. They didn't notice then because they were prepared to believe any kind of slander against a right-leaning SCOTUS nominee, but this time they saw through to the nastiness, the dishonesty, and the unfairness of trying to destroy the career of a man they admired via accusations of sexism fielded without any evidence whatsoever.
The very people she needed to vote for her didn't believe her -- perhaps in part because she has a long legacy of proven false statements about her own biography -- and they couldn't believe she'd try to destroy the reputation of a man who -- by their lights -- has lived with moral clarity and distinction for many decades. Bernie was arrested with the civil rights marchers; Bernie was always on the forefront of every issue they cared about. He's been a loyal husband to a loyal wife, advanced the causes of many women in politics, and she was prepared to destroy him anyway in pursuit of power.
If that was their judgment, they were right to drive her out of the path of power. If they were right about her, she's the kind of person who shouldn't have power.
UPDATE: Jeff Jacoby points out that 76% of women in Massachusetts voted against Warren. Democratic women voters, even, as Mike D points out in the comments.
An Advertisement for a Friend in Need
I don't do commercials here as a rule, but I'm making an exception for a friend whose small business had a misfortune not at all his fault.
As I've mentioned, one of the things I do for fun is Strongman competitions in a fully amateur, very minor way (and in the Masters Division, where 'Master' is a courteous euphemism for "too old" rather than meaning "great"). One of the places that hosts great competitions is Norse Fitness in Charlotte, NC. The host, Andy, is a great guy and has built a business around strength training and gear that supports his family (including a beautiful young daughter). Andy was going to go to the Arnold this year, one of the three biggest events in strength sports, but the trade show there was canceled due to the Coronavirus, and spectators forbidden.
Unfortunately, Andy bought a bunch of merchandise to take to sell; the Arnold organizers made the decision so late that he, and many others, are also too late to get refunds on their plane tickets, Air B&B reservations, and so on. So he's having a big 30% off sale on everything in his store.
The sale code is CORONA30. I've bought plenty of his gear in the past, and it's all of excellent quality. In addition, he has lots of Norse- and Viking-themed t-shirts and such, of the sort appropriate for Strongman competitors to wear while lifting giant objects Conan-style.
As I've mentioned, one of the things I do for fun is Strongman competitions in a fully amateur, very minor way (and in the Masters Division, where 'Master' is a courteous euphemism for "too old" rather than meaning "great"). One of the places that hosts great competitions is Norse Fitness in Charlotte, NC. The host, Andy, is a great guy and has built a business around strength training and gear that supports his family (including a beautiful young daughter). Andy was going to go to the Arnold this year, one of the three biggest events in strength sports, but the trade show there was canceled due to the Coronavirus, and spectators forbidden.
Unfortunately, Andy bought a bunch of merchandise to take to sell; the Arnold organizers made the decision so late that he, and many others, are also too late to get refunds on their plane tickets, Air B&B reservations, and so on. So he's having a big 30% off sale on everything in his store.
The sale code is CORONA30. I've bought plenty of his gear in the past, and it's all of excellent quality. In addition, he has lots of Norse- and Viking-themed t-shirts and such, of the sort appropriate for Strongman competitors to wear while lifting giant objects Conan-style.
Vagueness and Knowledge: Christianity Edition
AVI poses a question: When did Europe become Christian? Arguably never, he says.
If you want to debate that topic, please do it at his place because he deserves to enjoy the discussion there. What I want to do here is discuss a model that explains just why we can't really answer that question in a fully satisfactory way. I think it's a good model to have in your mind for a lot of purposes, one that many of you will find helpful.
The model belongs to Timothy Williamson. He came up with the basic approach in his work on vagueness, but later realized that it could serve as a revolutionary model for epistemology (which, I assume everyone knows, is defined as 'the study of knowledge,' but really is mostly a 2,000+ year debate about what exactly knowledge might be).* He wrote a book called Knowledge and its Limits that explains the epistemic model. It's become a big hit in the philosophy world because everyone hates the idea, but it's hard to show exactly where he goes wrong (if indeed he does).
The basic idea works like this: you can know things, and you can sometimes also know that you know them. Other times, however, you are close enough to a border such that you can't really be sure that you know what you know (so that you know, but don't know that you know). Accepting this explains both vagueness and why we sometimes can't be sure about question's like AVI's.
The example on vagueness is also an example about knowledge, so I'll just borrow it. Say that on a given day, day n, you are a child and you know that you are a child. Childhood lasts a long time, so presumably tomorrow (day n+1) you will also be a child. Since there is no obvious limit on that, you should remain a child forever: but somehow a day comes, say by day n+10,950, are not a child and you know that you are not a child anymore. Clarity exists on both ends of the spectrum.
So which day was the exact day on which you stopped being a child? There wasn't one, of course; somehow it happened, during a period of time in which you weren't really sure anymore. Sometimes you felt like a child, sometimes you could see yourself taking adult steps and becoming more adult as a consequence. Exactly when it happens is not clear.
Williamson's answer, in other words, is to dispose of certainty and embrace vagueness. I'm cold at 32 degrees F, and I know it; I'm warm at 75 degrees, and I know I'm not cold anymore. But as the temperature rises, there might come a point that even with careful reflection I couldn't say whether I was still cold. We could probably narrow that down with experiment, but it might vary a lot depending on weather conditions. A bright sunny windless day might no longer feel cold at 34, whereas a windy, wet, rainy day might feel quite cold even at 60 (hypothermia, in fact, is possible). But there will be a moment at which I'm plausibly not really sure.
That doesn't mean that we lose knowledge. We can not only know but know that we know at the ends of the spectrum. We lose that second-order certainty as we get closer to the border conditions; we might know but not know that we know. Very close to the border, we might not know.
So when did Europe become Christian? If the answer really is 'arguably never,' then we still are close enough to the border condition that we can't say we know it ever did. But I think we could say that we know that we know that European civilization was Christian in the 19th century. That seems like a flower of clarity. It may well be, as Eric Blair has often argued, that this civilization received its death blow in WWI and has been dying ever since. At some point we can't still say that we know that Europe is Christian at all, even if once we knew that it was and knew that we knew it.
* I'm leaving out a discussion of Williamson's argument that knowledge isn't analyzable, and focusing here on the vagueness aspect of knowledge, which I think is the more useful concept.
If you want to debate that topic, please do it at his place because he deserves to enjoy the discussion there. What I want to do here is discuss a model that explains just why we can't really answer that question in a fully satisfactory way. I think it's a good model to have in your mind for a lot of purposes, one that many of you will find helpful.
The model belongs to Timothy Williamson. He came up with the basic approach in his work on vagueness, but later realized that it could serve as a revolutionary model for epistemology (which, I assume everyone knows, is defined as 'the study of knowledge,' but really is mostly a 2,000+ year debate about what exactly knowledge might be).* He wrote a book called Knowledge and its Limits that explains the epistemic model. It's become a big hit in the philosophy world because everyone hates the idea, but it's hard to show exactly where he goes wrong (if indeed he does).
The basic idea works like this: you can know things, and you can sometimes also know that you know them. Other times, however, you are close enough to a border such that you can't really be sure that you know what you know (so that you know, but don't know that you know). Accepting this explains both vagueness and why we sometimes can't be sure about question's like AVI's.
The example on vagueness is also an example about knowledge, so I'll just borrow it. Say that on a given day, day n, you are a child and you know that you are a child. Childhood lasts a long time, so presumably tomorrow (day n+1) you will also be a child. Since there is no obvious limit on that, you should remain a child forever: but somehow a day comes, say by day n+10,950, are not a child and you know that you are not a child anymore. Clarity exists on both ends of the spectrum.
So which day was the exact day on which you stopped being a child? There wasn't one, of course; somehow it happened, during a period of time in which you weren't really sure anymore. Sometimes you felt like a child, sometimes you could see yourself taking adult steps and becoming more adult as a consequence. Exactly when it happens is not clear.
Williamson's answer, in other words, is to dispose of certainty and embrace vagueness. I'm cold at 32 degrees F, and I know it; I'm warm at 75 degrees, and I know I'm not cold anymore. But as the temperature rises, there might come a point that even with careful reflection I couldn't say whether I was still cold. We could probably narrow that down with experiment, but it might vary a lot depending on weather conditions. A bright sunny windless day might no longer feel cold at 34, whereas a windy, wet, rainy day might feel quite cold even at 60 (hypothermia, in fact, is possible). But there will be a moment at which I'm plausibly not really sure.
That doesn't mean that we lose knowledge. We can not only know but know that we know at the ends of the spectrum. We lose that second-order certainty as we get closer to the border conditions; we might know but not know that we know. Very close to the border, we might not know.
So when did Europe become Christian? If the answer really is 'arguably never,' then we still are close enough to the border condition that we can't say we know it ever did. But I think we could say that we know that we know that European civilization was Christian in the 19th century. That seems like a flower of clarity. It may well be, as Eric Blair has often argued, that this civilization received its death blow in WWI and has been dying ever since. At some point we can't still say that we know that Europe is Christian at all, even if once we knew that it was and knew that we knew it.
* I'm leaving out a discussion of Williamson's argument that knowledge isn't analyzable, and focusing here on the vagueness aspect of knowledge, which I think is the more useful concept.
So How Deadly is this Coronavirus?
The WHO is now claiming 3.4% fatality rates, but a Harvard doctor disputes that and says it's under 1%. (The President also disputes it, although I'm not convinced that he is the best expert to heed on this subject.)
Fake News Today
BB: 'My Healthcare Is None Of Your Business,' Says Woman Who Demands That You Pay For Her Healthcare
Local woman Sarah Harper declared Friday that her healthcare is none of your business or the government's business, though she wants the government to take more of your money to pay for it.DB: Army’s new coal-powered tiltrotor gaining traction in Congress
Harper posted a series of tweets Friday proclaiming how “men don’t have a say” when it comes to women's healthcare, and also that you should just “shut up and pay for it....
"Just hand over the money and no one gets hurt," she said.
“Admittedly, we had to trim down the passenger compartment to make room for the stoker crew and coal storage,” Bell-Textron CEO Mitch Snyder said.... Snyder told reporters that, if awarded program status, the Super Emu would be able to transport troops, conceal their deployment with billowing coal ash, and render enemy water sources non-potable—and in some places, caustic.
"Truculent"
I ran across this word today and was struck by the fact that I couldn't think of a single related word in the English language (aside from the adverb and noun versions of the same word). I went to check the etymology, which is Latin: truculentus, apparently passed through the Middle French.
The first attestation of the word in English is from 1540, which may explain why it has no English cognates. Perhaps it didn't come over from the Anglo French in or just after 1066, but was brought over as a loan word during or just after the Hundred Years War. It could easily have been a common word among the Middle French-speaking knights who were regularly interacting with the English-speaking knights until the 1450s, and thus first written down in a source that survives to us around a hundred years after that.
A hundred years sounds like a big gap, but it's just for what happened to survive that we're aware of to put in our reference sources. A lot of records were lost in the Henry VIII period due to the destruction of Catholic monastic libraries. The word sounds like one Shakespeare would have liked, but I can't find that he used it.
The first attestation of the word in English is from 1540, which may explain why it has no English cognates. Perhaps it didn't come over from the Anglo French in or just after 1066, but was brought over as a loan word during or just after the Hundred Years War. It could easily have been a common word among the Middle French-speaking knights who were regularly interacting with the English-speaking knights until the 1450s, and thus first written down in a source that survives to us around a hundred years after that.
A hundred years sounds like a big gap, but it's just for what happened to survive that we're aware of to put in our reference sources. A lot of records were lost in the Henry VIII period due to the destruction of Catholic monastic libraries. The word sounds like one Shakespeare would have liked, but I can't find that he used it.
By Jove, I don't care for the cut of this fellow's jib
The New Yorker is shocked, shocked to learn that persuasiveness in human society sometimes depends on base emotional impact rather than elevated rationality. In a long essay devoted to the degradation of previously pristine political discourse since the days of declaiming in the agora, I mean, speaking from the back on trains on whistlestop tours, I mean, orating over the radio, I mean, winning the beauty contest on this newfangled teevee, I mean, getting down in the mud in what the kids are calling this social media thing, Andrew Marantz details the horror of the 2016 Trump campaign in the sniffiest possible New Yorker tones. He particularly deplores the skill of Trump's digital guru, Brad Parscale:
It would be difficult to top this offhand reference to the Alamo by a Brahmin who may go to his grave never comprehending how the wrong sort of people end up holding influential public positions: "Parscale’s operation was unofficially called Project Alamo, a reference to the grisly encounter in a nineteenth-century border war between Texas separatists and the government of Mexico." But the author saves the best for last, simultaneously exposing his hilariously obvious double-standard and his desperate willingness to undermine an admission of truth with empty qualifiers:
I end on this hopeful note:
In 2016, three weeks after Election Day, Harvard’s Institute of Politics hosted a panel discussion featuring leaders of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Trump’s campaign—the first public reunion of the now dunces and the now geniuses. It got heated.
“I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s director of communications, said.
“No, you wouldn’t, respectfully,” Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s campaign managers, said.I laughed out loud almost all the way through, but never more than when reading references to things like "social media, where lies and fractious memes are disproportionately likely to be amplified." Could these people be any less self-aware? Did you know, for instance, that bad Republicans tried to spread rumors that Clinton had undisclosed ties to Vladimir Putin? Who would stoop to something like that? To make matters worse, "This past fall, the Trump campaign ran a Facebook ad premised on the incendiary but false notion that the villain of the Ukraine corruption scandal was not Trump but Joe Biden."
It would be difficult to top this offhand reference to the Alamo by a Brahmin who may go to his grave never comprehending how the wrong sort of people end up holding influential public positions: "Parscale’s operation was unofficially called Project Alamo, a reference to the grisly encounter in a nineteenth-century border war between Texas separatists and the government of Mexico." But the author saves the best for last, simultaneously exposing his hilariously obvious double-standard and his desperate willingness to undermine an admission of truth with empty qualifiers:
“No one ever complained about Facebook for a single day until Donald Trump was President,” Brad Parscale has said. When the Obama campaign used Facebook in new and innovative ways, the media “called them geniuses.” When Parscale did the same, he continued, he was treated as “the evil of earth.” Despite the bombast and the false equivalence, this is basically true.See? It's true, but it's full of bombast, and debunked by a false equivalence so obvious to right-thinking people that we don't even have to identify the equivalence, let alone the falsehood. Because we operate on a higher level of honesty and principle than that dreadful upstart.
I end on this hopeful note:
Since 2016, one of Parscale’s shrewdest innovations has been to turn the continuing rallies into data-mining opportunities. Tickets are free, but they can only be claimed by a person with a valid cell-phone number. The campaign now has a huge database of mobile numbers belonging to people who are motivated enough to attend a Trump rally, many of whom might not have shown up on a voter-registration roll or any other official data file.
“We have almost two hundred and fifteen million hard-I.D. voter records in our database now,” Parscale claimed last year, although his definition of “hard I.D.” is not clear. Even if Trump were banned from every social network, his campaign would be able to reach supporters by text.
"The world soul could use more brains."
The aptly named Freeman Dyson--we might almost have called him Freemind Dyson--died this week just short of the age of 100.
Dyson once wrote an essay titled “Birds and Frogs,”
in which he described complementary species of mathematicians: “Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs,” he wrote. “Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time. I happen to be a frog, but many of my best friends are birds.”
Some might disagree with Dyson’s assessment of himself. “Characteristically clever and self-deprecating,” the author James Gleick replied, when I posted that excerpt on Twitter. “I think he was a bird.”
He elaborated in an email. For a moment, Mr. Gleick said, in the case of quantum electrodynamics, Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger were the frogs and only Dr. Dyson could see them both: “Schwinger had solved quantum electrodynamics with a difficult formalism that almost no one understood, and Feynman had solved quantum electrodynamics with his powerful diagrams — easy for physicists to use and compute with but still hard to understand — and it was Dyson who saw the thing whole, proving that Feynman’s and Schwinger’s solutions were mathematically equivalent.” He added that Dr. Dyson should have shared their Nobel Prize.
Andre Norton
I read a number of her works when I was younger, and still have a few of them around -- I think there's a copy of Quag Keep in the library. It took me a long time to work out that "Andre" was a woman, which was her intention.
Born as Alice Mary Norton in 1912, Norton started writing while she was still in high school.... in 1934 she had her name legally changed to Andre Alice Norton, and adopted several male-sounding pen names so as to prevent her gender from becoming an obstacle to sales in the first market she wrote for: young boys literature.D&D with Fritz Leiber! That would have been a good time. Norton was no slouch either.
...
In 1976, Gary Gygax even persuaded Andre Norton to try out his new Dungeons & Dragons game, and he ran her through a session in his storied world of Greyhawk. Shortly thereafter, Norton was inspired to write the very first D&D novel, Quag Keep (1979). Along with Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton was one of a handful of early authors to experience the very games that their works had inspired.
Local politics
I'm feeling good about the political health of my county this evening. We have four local races, and while the early and mail-in tallies are not great in three of them, I didn't feel strongly about any of those races, more a matter of personal preference. The important race was to replace our County Attorney, who also is our only felony prosecutor. This has been a dreadful scandal in my community, and in recent weeks I was beginning to worry whether my neighbors were going to rise up properly and vote her out. We went to a great deal of trouble to run a good opponent and to get the word out. We don't have full results yet, but the tally of early and mail-in ballots shows the challenging taking 76% of the vote, which is very, very good news. Early voting doesn't always split the same way as election-day voting, but a lead like 76% doesn't get overturned.
Good, simple, French Onion Soup
A couple of weeks ago, Hello Fresh sent me and the missus a French Onion Soup meal. It was okay. My biggest problem was that they tried to satisfy as many customers as possible and ended up with a less satisfying meal by substituting mushroom stock for the more traditional beef stock. And I said as much to the Lovely Bride. She was skeptical and didn't think it was bad at all.
So I decided to "fix" the recipe on my own. And this is one of the reasons I really like Hello Fresh. It may cost between a (inexpensive) restaurant meal and what you'd pay if you shopped for the groceries yourself, but you can keep the recipe card and shop for the groceries yourself in the future if you really like it. Or... in this case, want to make it better.
So I decided to "fix" the recipe on my own. And this is one of the reasons I really like Hello Fresh. It may cost between a (inexpensive) restaurant meal and what you'd pay if you shopped for the groceries yourself, but you can keep the recipe card and shop for the groceries yourself in the future if you really like it. Or... in this case, want to make it better.
Horns of the dilemma
From Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics:
While any or all of the bottom four candidates might drop out [after Super Tuesday], it is unlikely that enough support will go to Sanders in subsequent primaries to give him the 50%-plus-one majority he would need to ensure a first-ballot victory at the convention July 13-16 in Milwaukee. If he does win outright, then the party will have nominated a cranky 79-year-old socialist with a man crush on authoritarian communists like Fidel Castro. That would normally be a nightmare scenario, but this year it is the best-case scenario.
If he doesn’t win outright, then pandemonium is sure to ensue. The Democratic establishment would have to decide whether to endorse a socialist as its standard-bearer, in which case they would be responsible for the subsequent George McGovern-style bloodbath, or to stop Sanders by throwing their support to another candidate, possibly even one who has not campaigned but is willing to be drafted as the nominee. (The possibilities: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Michelle Obama or even Adam “You Won’t Have to Ask Me Twice” Schiff.)
The War on Deplorables
Steve Hayward reminds us that the war on traditional citizens leads to strange intra-party politics that make it hard for a party to nominate a candidate with broad appeal, and have been doing so periodically for half a century at least:
A concession Jesse Jackson won at the [1988] Democratic National Convention was a substantial reduction in the number of “superdelegates”—the governors, state legislators, and congressmen recently introduced into the convention process. Another concession reduced the proportion of votes a candidate required to qualify for delegates and did away with “winner-take-all” primaries. This rule change will encourage factionalism by making it worthwhile for candidates to stay in the race longer so as to amass a larger force of delegates. More factions and fewer coalitions, I am afraid, are in store. Thus the desire of party activists to adopt more egalitarian policies, or their inability to reject egalitarian mechanisms—take your pick—will give egalitarians a greater voice in conventions to come. Not every future Democratic presidential nominee need be strongly egalitarian, but no one obnoxious to egalitarians will get far.
CDC competence vel non
I'm always up for a good "incompetent government bureaucracy" hook, but this thoughtful comment from Maggie's Farm is a more balanced approach:
I heard a few days ago that the reason we don't have a good test for the Corona virus was because we needed to have patients with the virus so that we could use their body fluids in a process that would make a test for it. I understand also that the CDC tried to roll out a test for the corona virus anyway because of course they need the test. But because they didn't have a good sample of the virus available the test was not accurate and gave false positives and false negatives. To speed up the process they bypassed an administrative rule to allow other agencies (states and others) to develop the test because by then there were a few confirmed patients to get samples from and since the patients were closer to outside laboratories this process would be faster than if the CDC insisted that only they could create the test.
One other factor in this is some have commented that smaller and less capable countries had developed the test so why couldn't we. There are two answers: 1. They had confirmed patients before we did which gave them the necessary samples. 2. They may have (probably did) develop tests like our first ones which give false results BUT since their standards are not as high as the CDC they decided "who cares" and went ahead and used them. (Or they are still clueless that their tests are giving them false results.)
Count me as one of those who doubts that our doctors are bumbling fools and that our CDC is incompetent. I am sure their bureaucracy sometimes interferes with best practices but generally I would say our CDC is as good as any similar organization anywhere. I think the problem is that they failed to adequately explain the holdup and thus to us it looks like a screw-up.I still think, of course, that human systems are inevitably prone to error, and improvement will always depend on a relentless willingness to try different approaches, compare predictions to reality, and assess honestly which approaches are the most effective. Flexibility and honesty not being the easiest goals in human institutions, and government bureaucracies not being their natural home, it's a tough challenge. Nevertheless, I don't want to pile on the CDC just because they fail a theoretical test of perfection. They're certainly doing a better job than I would know how to do.
"My Own Private Denmark"
PowerLine discusses in some detail today a theme that Assistant Village Idiot has often raised: Socialist and socialist-leaning Americans appear to have in mind an image of Scandinavian socialism that was tried, and then abandoned, some decades ago, when its ruinous effects on prosperity and job-creation were observed.
As Ace says, we continue to judge socialism by its intentions but capitalism by its results. Meanwhile, other countries try the grand experiment, while we avert our eyes from its effects, preferring to take a walk down memory/fantasy lane.
As Ace says, we continue to judge socialism by its intentions but capitalism by its results. Meanwhile, other countries try the grand experiment, while we avert our eyes from its effects, preferring to take a walk down memory/fantasy lane.
Some Further Discussion on Piercello's Proposal
Piercello asked me to clarify the boundary between strict logic and the kind of practical logics we find in ethics (like the use of logic in rhetoric). I thought the answer was worth a separate post.
I'm delighted to host a discussion like this one. It's an excellent use of our limited time on earth to wrestle with these high questions.
The boundary between strict logic and non-strict logic (including but not limited to rhetorical logic) is bright-line, and indeed already expressed in our discussion. It has to do with what kinds of objects the logic is treating. Strict logic treats logical objects, i.e., objects that are internally consistent throughout.
Objects in strict logic include universals, variables, and constants. Universals are true universals (usually formalized as capital letters these days, like "F"). A constant is an individual (usually 'a, b, c...' from the front of the alphabet); a variable (usually 'x, y, z') is a set of particulars that can range over many individuals, so that you can speak using variables about what it means for particulars to instantiate the universal. So if "F" is "is a raven," then "Fx" is "anything that is a raven," and "Fa" is "a, which is a raven." Expressed in more Platonic terms, "F" is a way of referring to the form of ravenness; Fx refers to all objects that instantiate this form; Fa refers to one particular object that instantiates the form.
However, as Aristotle points out at the beginning of the [Nicomachean] ethics, we never encounter any of these things in real life. His account of why objects don't perfectly instantiate Platonic forms differs from mine; he thought that practical objects, being made of matter, didn't perfectly instantiate the forms because of the potential necessary for matter which was never quite fully actualized into the pure activity of the form. I've explained that I think the real reason is that we shift from logical objects to analogies between physical objects that really aren't 'alike throughout' in the way that logical objects by their nature are.
Note then that Kant is not really doing strict logic at any point in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Because this is groundwork for a project in the practical world, he is always dealing with ethical objects rather than strict logical objects. Kant is really unhappy with Aristotle's approach, which I mentioned above. What Aristotle says is this (EN 1.3):
"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better."
Kant does not like the idea that we cannot be precise in our ethical conclusions, and is trying hard to figure out a way around the problem that will allow for clear, precise, rational ethical decision. His move is to reach for universals not as forms, but in terms of generalizing situations to see if you can come to general principles (i.e. what he calls 'universal laws') that govern all different instances of a problem. (It will turn out you really can't, because problems don't instantiate singularly; usually a real ethical dilemma is a nest of different problems, where the general principles are in conflict. But set that aside.)
I recommend Kant because his project seems to me to be allied to yours in important ways. It is definitely not exactly the same, though. You are also wrestling with this issue of how to persuade people to behave in more rational ways. Like Kant, you need to get people to accept standards that are alien or foreign to them currently. Kant's introducing several concepts that are brand new, like the categorical imperative; no one has ever heard this terminology before at the time he's publishing this groundbreaking work. So he has to persuade people (rhetoric) that this is a sensible way to talk, as well as that it can solve some of the problems of ethics (rhetorical logic).
Note, though, that he is not really at any point engaged in strict logic. He is trying as hard as he can to find something analogous to a logical object in practical life. The universals he's reaching for with his 'universal laws' aren't logical universals, but broad analogies under which many different practical problems might fall.
As a result, the sandwich you describe isn't quite there. Rather, he is trying to shoehorn analogy into logic as much as can be done. I think Kant believes he's successful, which enables him in the wider Metaphysics of Morals (written many years after the Groundwork, by the way) to declare his conclusions with much more firmness than they have proven to deserve (e.g., that any just society must have a sovereign individual who is immune to the laws; that marriage can only be a union of exactly two persons of the opposite sex, and that absolutely all societies must introduce legal marriage in precisely this form; that masturbation is necessarily worse than suicide; etc).
That said, I also think you can learn the rules of strict logic without in any way adopting the consensus that they are the right way to proceed. Most everyone who engages in the practice seriously, including myself, develops a critique of parts of it. That's one of the most interesting aspects of the study of logic. There is a rhetorical aspect to such criticisms, in that we are trying to persuade each other that our approach to wrestling with the problem we've encountered with the system is better than other methods. But it's not necessary to learning the system; all that you have to do to learn the system is learn it, not consent to it.
The closest thing I think you can say is that you have to learn the rules of a game to play the game. But it's still not rhetoric; it just looks like rhetoric because we typically learn it from someone else. Imagine (here's a Kantian exercise) a man who was somehow born and raised by wolves, but in his adulthood began to try to work out the rules of logic. He might come up with different ways of solving particular problems, just as in math the Japanese have developed a different way of doing multiplication than Westerners. But because strict logic like* math has an objective standard, whatever approaches he developed could be found to be valid or invalid, complete or incomplete, independently of ever discussing them with anyone. The objective standard is provided by logic itself: some approaches to logic work, and some do not.
It's sticky, trying to deal with the hinge between these models -- which can somehow be objectively tested against themselves, that itself a philosophical difficulty -- and the way the models apply to reality. Somehow they do, even though the kinds of objects involved in math/logic are not what we encounter, we can use math and logic predicatively with a lot of success. Why the success is even possible is a problem, given the incompatibility of the kinds of objects involved; why the success applies only imperfectly is another problem.
If I've given you serious problems, though, I'm doing my proper work as a philosopher.
* "like math" is itself problematic philosophically; there's a huge debate as to whether logic is in fact a subset of math, or indeed whether math is actually a subset of logic, or if they are simply similar fields. This is non-resolved after 2,000 years of discussion.
We're not sick, quit (atchoo) saying we are
Nothing says "healthy culture" like an hysterical inability to tolerate disagreement.
Given the accumulated costs of decades of state-driven lending, massive malfeasance by local officials in cahoots with local banks, a towering property bubble, and vast industrial overcapacity, China is as ripe as a country can be for a massive economic correction. Even a small initial shock could lead to a massive bonfire of the vanities as all the false values, inflated expectations and misallocated assets implode. If that comes, it is far from clear that China’s regulators and decision makers have the technical skills or the political authority to minimize the damage—especially since that would involve enormous losses to the wealth of the politically connected.
Critical ideology studies
From Maggie's Farm, advice from Andrew Gleeson on avoiding temporal or cultural myopia in a modern university:
What follows is advice I would offer to any student with the good fortune to study such a [Great Books] course. You enjoy a remarkable opportunity—afforded inside what Oakeshott called “the interim,” a sunny recess between the sheltered world of childhood and adolescence, and the onerous responsibilities of adulthood—to enjoy without distraction an induction into a great inheritance. It is unlikely you will get it again. I hope the thoughts I have assembled here will help you make the most of your experience. They are not exhaustive and they are not gospel. You can judge their value for yourself as you pursue your studies.There's a radical thought! If you don't treat Western Civilization as gospel, you needn't fear contaminating your progressive purity merely by deigning to study it. Gleeson warns that a typical modern "critical studies" approach undermines the very sense of independent critical judgment that a student should be pursuing in reading the Great Books.
One often hears the word “critical” used as an adjective to describe some fields of academic studies, e.g., “critical X studies” (as if other fields were uncritical). Too often it means merely to be against when really it should mean to be discriminating. Worse, sometimes it signals an expectation of subscribing to (and conscripting the text and reader into the service of) an ideology.
By contrast, proper attention to the great books cultivates an independence of judgment you should jealously guard.A course of "progressive" study ought to mean approaching progressivism itself with the same skepticism its proponents advocate for a study of the Western canon.
It's History-Makin'
The Commandant orders the elimination of Confederate "paraphernalia" from all USMC facilities. What does that mean? I'm not sure, since it appears the USMC doesn't have any Confederate memorials or anything like that. Were rebel flags being sold at the exchange? The Corps' spokesman was unclear on exactly what, if anything, would be affected.
But it's just one part of the bold agenda for a new Marine Corps.
A humane, practical, beautiful solution.
But it's just one part of the bold agenda for a new Marine Corps.
Commandant Gen. David Berger last week instructed top Marine leaders to remove Confederate-related paraphernalia from the service's bases worldwide. The directive is one of several forward-leaning initiatives Berger said he is "prioritizing for immediate execution."Yes, sir, more young women in the combat arms, with a year off each if they bear children. Of course this is all a part of bringing perfect equality among the sexes, except for the part where the women get a year off; and it won't cause disruption or degradation of standards when the female members of the team vanish from training and deployment for a year. (A year, out of a four year enlistment!) No, only good things will come from this wholesale adoption of social justice ideals into military standards.
In his memo, a copy of which was obtained by Military.com, Berger also ordered leaders to find ways to move more women into combat jobs, to review the possibility of yearlong maternity leave for female Marines, and to extend parental leave policies to same-sex partners.
A humane, practical, beautiful solution.
Medieval Philosophy
A nice little collection of video lectures from Medievalists.
UPDATE: Skip the one on defining metaphysics, which is not good.
UPDATE: Skip the one on defining metaphysics, which is not good.
Panic/Don't Panic
Some good perspectives on the pandemic from NeoNeo, in an open-comments session. In the don't-panic line:
I’ve been watching this topic for the last several weeks. There’s still very little known and some of what is known is suspect. Just on general principles, I don’t believe the Chinese numbers, and I really would not be at all surprised if various Western nations are holding back information – it’s already clear how incredibly stupid people are when stampeding in panic.
It’s been my stance from the beginning – once it was clear that direct human-to-human transmission was possible, and apparently fairly easy (eg, the Webasto case in Germany) – that the actual number of people who have been exposed to the virus is vastly higher than numbers indicate. You can reasonably assume at this point that virtually all of the millions of people in the densely populated Chinese cities initially hit have been exposed. (You can also assume that every person on the Diamond Princess was exposed.) If they actually are counting deaths in the low thousands, it means it’s really not much more deadly than seasonal flus which kill tens of millions every year anyway.
Logically, you cannot have a virus which is on one hand easily transmissible and on the other hand, not rampant in a closely packed urban setting. Thus all of the original counts are skewed sharply toward people sick enough to seek medical care, omitting huge numbers of people who aren’t and never were. It is not reasonably possible anywhere to test every one of millions of asymptomatic people, or people who have minor cold/flu symptoms during cold/flu season. It’s not as if the normal cold/flu viruses politely took the season off so this new virus could have the stage to itself.
The latter is the second thing I wonder about. Since everyone is obsessed with testing for a new virus, are they assuming every sick person who tests positive for this coronavirus can only be sick because of it, not because of other viruses in circulation? It’s been hard to get an answer to that, as in, “We tested for the flu A, B and C variants that are common this season in our area, and got a negative result, and then we tested for COVID-19.”
Since so much is unknown, the situation has to be watched with caution. There’s ample evidence that older people and those already ill need to be particularly cautious; what we’ve seen so far suggests that COVID-19 is more likely to kill in that group, vs the young and healthy, as was the case with the 1918 Spanish flu. But after saying that, I do think coverage so far has been needlessly over-the-top and hysterical.On the other hand, preparing for panic itself is not a bad idea, because believing something is irrational is not at all the same as believing people aren't likely to act that way:
It’s a bit like the point I made earlier about panic buying. You might be all reasonable and superior intellectually and *not* panic buy because that after all is the unreasonable herd doing what the herd does. But that attitude won’t feed your children after the herd has stripped the shelves. The Reasonable Thing to do is get in there and get shelf-stripping yourself Stat. (Or prepare in advance of the Herd).
* * *
For all your Reason, humans are mimetic apes. You work with that… or you get nowhere.And:
Stock up on basic essential supplies. We have no idea how fragile our logistics and other systems are until it’s too late. Is all very well to laugh at panic buyers… But if said panic buyers stripped the shelves and you can’t eat, well where’s your intellectual and moral superiority then?
Make contingency plans for relatives who need regular medical care: Things like outpatient chemotherapy, dialysis, insulin supplies. I am pretty damn sure that a lot of people died in China because [they] could not get to their dialysis sessions because their block was quarantined and/or the hospital they usually went to was chaotically overloaded with Coronavirus cases.
I hope it turns out to be a fizzer. But even a fizzer can be the straw that broke the systemic over-complexity camel’s back. A little preparation is a good thing. Official pronouncements will aim to avoid mass panic. This is good too. But it also means that official pronouncements *could* be understating the problem. So be smart and make some simple preparations.
Age of Conan: Soundtrack
Popular music is so awful today, it's easy to think that no lovely music is being produced. As Eric Blair used to say, though, it's being done -- it's just not making the radio. Lots of it is being made for movies, and now for video games.
There's some very pleasant stuff there. It's not groundbreaking; I think it's intended to be derivative of the 1982 Conan's soundtrack. But it's nice.
There's some very pleasant stuff there. It's not groundbreaking; I think it's intended to be derivative of the 1982 Conan's soundtrack. But it's nice.
Religious Freedom, Exceptis Excipiendis
Apropos of nothing, Sanders brought up an essay Vought had written as an alumnus of Wheaton College. The Christian school had fired a professor for a Facebook post in which she announced that she would wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims for a season. In an article in response, Vought wrote out a basic Christian tenet: that people cannot know God except through Jesus. "Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology," he wrote. "They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his son, and they stand condemned."In fairness, I'm pretty sure that even the Pope no longer believes that statement.
Sanders repeatedly read this passage back to Vought during his confirmation hearing, at one point accusing him of perpetuating Islamophobia.
“In my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible. It is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world,” Sanders said. “This country, since its inception, has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms … we must not go backwards.”
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