Bad Christians

The lead story for two weeks running in The Smoky Mountain News has been about a dude* in a bikini. Nobody knows who this dude is, or what sex/gender the person is, or what pronouns are preferred (SMN is at pains to point that out, but then assumes 'she' is correct in their coverage). These were accompanied by an editorial against the "dangerous vigilante fantasies" of country music, which must "end."

Coverage by the local paper has been painfully sanctimonious. Now SMN is a good paper in spite of its clear liberal editorial bias; they produce well-researched journalism on the drug trafficking situation in the region, on local politics, on internal Cherokee Nation affairs, and also on arts and literature in the area (the latter being why I read it; I often find out about good bands and live shows through them). I've been genuinely impressed by their straight journalism work. Even here, they went to some trouble to get the facts straight and to file appropriate public records requests, etc. That's not the issue.

I'm also willing to give an argument against interest in opposing the sanctimony. The coverage demonstrates that people were passing rumors that are not supported by the video of the incident. That's dangerous, as they say; and we can reasonably agree that a hundred years ago a similar kind of rumor about possible sexual predation by a hated minority might have led to a lynching. The absence of lynchings marks real progress, and I am prepared to acknowledge that these sort of irritating liberal responses are presumably partly to be credited for that progress. (Certainly not wholly to be credited for it, but I can see the argument that they are assisting in providing a helpful social immunity to such mob violence).

All the same, I have a problem with the preaching. I do mean preaching literally:  two of the section headers in their first piece are unelaborated Biblical references, whose clear intention is to suggest that their social opponents are bad Christians as well as bad people (as well as wrong on the facts). 

This is not necessary, and in fact is very risky, for their preferred arrangement. Their basic argument is captured in their headline: "The mere existence of trans people is not a crime." (Again, whether or not the wholly anonymous dude in the bikini is in fact trans, or just a David Lee Roth impersonator, is not clear from the facts.) Now that's true as a matter of fact, but it's accidentally true: and if you put it to a clean vote, democratically speaking, I don't know that it would continue to be true. Still, the best argument is that there is official toleration of this violation of local mores that the population is legally bound to accept regardless of whatever they or their church think about it.

Shifting it to a religious ground opens the question of whether this kind of behavior is in fact something that ought to be tolerated as a matter of ethics and morals, and it turns out religion has a lot to say about that. St. Augustine and Aquinas have a lot to say, as does the official doctrine of many churches, as do many preachers and priests who might rise of a Sunday morning to speak to the matter if asked to do so.

The liberal project to a large degree depends on disallowing that entire line of argument. The liberal project no longer attempts -- as it did in the era of Immanuel Kant** -- to universalize religious philosophy as an exercise of practical reason. It has long since simply declared that religion belongs in the private sphere. Because freedom of religion is a basic right, anyone may accept or refuse to accept any religious doctrine. Thus, positive laws cannot enshrine religious doctrines without violating the right of people to reject the doctrines those rules are based upon. 

If you want to argue religion, you have to admit religion to the debate. If you want to exclude religion from public life, you don't get to preach either. 

As for country music, I haven't ever heard the song and thus don't know if I consider it actual country, which is a more vicious debate even than these already described.  The tradition of vigilante fantasies in music is very old and broad, though; it's not just Merle Haggard and Charlie Daniels but traditional Irish and Scottish music, and English, and, well, all such music. You're just going to have to learn to live with that one, SMN. Freedom of artistic expression is a basic right on the liberal model too. 

* Dude is a gender-neutral term, they say.

** Kant's universalized philosophy of practical reason was hotly against alternative sexualities, by the way.

A Less Glorious Outing

We had a call overnight that lasted 14 hours. A big storm left us pulling security for the electrical workers who were repairing the damage so two districts could get power back. It was necessary to completely close the only artery through this area for more than twelve hours, and that on a Saturday night when many people were traveling up or down the mountain while a little tipsy. 

On the upside, power has been restored and no electrical workers were hurt by crazy drivers crashing through their work zones after midnight. I had a chance to get to know one of the elders in the community, who had many interesting stories about his decades with the department of transportation, mountain foods he'd grown up with and recommended, and which creeks were good fishing. He kept coming back on foot all night because his family was trapped on the other side of the barricade, and he was worried about them. We had eyes on them, we just couldn't let anybody through all night.

I can't remember the last time I actually stayed up all night until dawn, which is an experience I remember more fondly from my youth. I think I might forgo it, as fate allows, for the future. 

“Thank you for saving our House”

The nice lady who lived by the place that burned Monday brought me a cobbler and a very sweet note. I’m glad I was out at the time she brought it by, as I’m not always felicitous with such emotions. Still, I very much appreciate knowing that it meant something to her. 

Apropos of the Last

A hero even in California.

Arming Victims Changes Things

Kerry Slone, who describes herself as a victim of domestic violence, has a suggestion for those like herself.

A firearm represents a much bigger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself. Men can readily hurt women without a gun, and if a woman is already in physical contact with the attacker so that he can take away their gun, they are already in trouble.

The peer-reviewed research shows that murder rates decline when people carry concealed handguns, whether men or women. But a woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than a man doing the same.

I have been asked to train women in the use of handguns, when they've separated from a partner and become afraid of him. I did so gladly, even though I might have liked the guy and doubted that he would in fact pursue any sort of harm towards her. If he did not, as I suspected he would not, no harm would befall him; and if he did, well, then he had it coming. 

It's strange, I reflect, to live in an era that turns every piece of once-jovial intellectual property into a complaint by women against men -- Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Marvel comic movies, apparently even Barbie dolls -- yet dodges this simple, practical remedy for the worst sort of actual harm that men do to women. We festoon the complaint rather than solving it.

Victims who are armed aren't victims anymore. They are, to use the language of the complaint, transformed into active agents rather than passive patients. They can assert their will, defend their interests, not be harmed against consent. I might suggest to them that their friends, the real allies, are those who help you get there rather than those who commiserate in the complaint. 

Awful Local News

Three junior Marines dead in North Carolina. 

This was unexpected

The Hunter Biden plea deal is not quite dead, but it's not looking good, either.

A Crisis of Masculinity

There's a bit of a fuss over Politico hosting a 'masculinity' issue without actually asking any men to participate in it. I agree that this is prima facie an odd thing to do, but if you reflect for a moment there are two ways in which it makes sense. First, as my friend Shireen Qudosi argues, men and women exist in (necessary) relationship to each other. (She has thoughts on that necessary connection, too.) It would make a kind of sense to ask women for their independent perspective on how the relationship was going. 

Unfortunately, that wasn't why Politico did it. They did it for the other reason, which is worse: there is a dearth of scholars of masculinity because you could never get tenure in 'male studies.' There are 'women's studies' and 'gender studies' (which apparently never includes one of the major genders, per se unhyphenated males). There are feminists in history departments and literature departments and art departments who are tenured to write feminine-perspective studies of those things. No university on earth has a "masculine studies" program, partly because men are likely to regard that sort of thing as navel-gazing nonsense, and  partly because the whole academic society is hotly against it. 

So we are getting a perspective on masculinity from those who are hostile to it. This is familiar. The New York Times did a similar thing with chivalry, asking a lot of people who weren't chivalrous and didn't really have a notion of what the concept meant whether or not it was important. The Times at least found one person who had some actual relationship to the topic to ask, which is better than this project; he was just not ready to talk about it because he hadn't been asked to think much about it before, only to do it. Politico hasn't even got that, which makes the quality of their work dubious. 

I wrote a response to the Times series, but I don't think I'll write one for Politico. They're allied questions, since chivalry happens to reliably produce the best sort of men. It's not the only way, though: here is a purely religious alternative approach recommended by my cousin the (female) physician. That sufficiently maps out the issue, which is that good men can do a lot of good, and bad men a lot of harm. It's really important to get this right, but our scholars aren't worried about it because they've decided that rising in their social class is more important -- and that requires talking up the hostile-to-the-alleged-patriarchy feminist perspective, and utterly dismissing alternative views (beginning with questioning whether this country in any sense constitutes a 'patriarchy'). 

As Texan99 once put it, since she's a woman anything she does must be feminine. Mutatis mutandis, anything I or any man does must be in some sense masculine. There may be special goods that only good fathers can provide, or good husbands, or good men; or it may only be that there are goods they are more likely to provide. It seems like the maleness is a given, though; the real issue is developing the virtues of masculinity, rather than the masculinity itself. Now that's something I've written a lot about already, and a question that continues to matter year after year.

A Quiet Afternoon

So today, after the weekend of intense rescue training, I intended to take a day off from firefighting and rest up.

As we were driving to the store, not even a half mile from home, I looked over and saw a big fire through the trees. I went running over after I jumped out of the truck and found a building that was so completely engulfed with rolling flames that I couldn't see any part of it. All I could see was the shape of a building, made out of fire.

I got back to my truck and a neighbor lady was saying that she was going to call 911, so instead of doing that I drove as fast as I could to the Fire Station and got my gear. I passed the fire engine on the way -- they'd just been paged off her call -- so I changed into my turnout gear and went back. I got there almost the same time as the truck, was handed one of the attack hoses, and fought the fire on the rear of the house.

We fought that fire for quite a while before any other stations arrived to back us up. After a while, though, there were enough of them that another crew could relieve us. By then we'd knocked down the worst of it.

I told you all of that to tell you this: after we were relieved, some EMTs who had responded were assigned to check the attack team's pulse, blood pressure, and other vitals. The lady who was trying to check mine couldn't get a blood pressure reading because my upper arm was too big. She then shifted to my lower arm. She still couldn't get a blood pressure reading because my lower arm was too big. 

She asked her partner if they had a bigger cuff, and he said no. I replied, "No worries, ma'am. After hearing you say that my arms are too big to get a blood pressure reading, I'll be just fine. I'll be walking on air all afternoon."

She just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh my God. Firefighters."

Legacies

Without being a Larry Summers fan, I thought he got the boot as Harvard's president under ridiculous circumstances. In this Bari Weiss interview about the future of legacy admission, Summers makes sensible points about the purpose of an elite university's admission process while avoiding several fashionable types of arrant nonsense. Mostly he seems to consider questions like: Should we care whether a student is self-motivated or simply allowing his over-involved parents to stuff his resume with expensive baubles? Does an applicant's history of overcoming adversity tell us how much he'll benefit from a challenging university curriculum? Do we trust ourselves to detect intellectual talent any more, or have we decided that we can teach calculus to a horse if we purify our politics sufficiently? If elitist topics like calculus aren't the point any more, then why not simply mail the diploma to anyone who asks for it, to level the playing field? OK, he doesn't ask those questions exactly, but his thoughts are tempting him into these dangerous heresies.

A question that caught my eye was whether the people paying a fortune in Harvard tuition legitimately expected their little darlings to get the whole Harvard experience, the most important part of which is developing a good rolodex in preparation for a life of nepotistic privilege. Not that I can't see the practical value of such an approach, but it meshes poorly with the image of Harvard as social justice warrior.

Off to the Wilderness

In addition to the TR General/Rope Rescue series I mentioned, I've been concurrently taking TR Wilderness classes on alternating weekends. This weekend is the last of those too, so by Sunday my summer of rescue classes will have come to an end. (If you're keeping track at home, I was already TR Water certified.)

I'll be out participating in the exercises and exams through Sunday. Have a good weekend. 

UPDATE: It’s 8:40 PM Sunday and I’m back on station. 

The night phase turned out to be a full scale search and rock rope-rescue by midnight. Both it and other phases were handled with great skill by everyone in spite of the difficulty of coming from different agencies and levels of government. My son, I am pleased to say, was part of the rope team on the cliff top. He’s coming along.

It almost turned into a real rescue. A 14 year old girl went missing yesterday, and they almost called off the exercise to have us participate in the search. Fortunately I’m told that she was located quickly, so we continued with the exercise.

“Hey y’all”

Quite a translation from the French. 

I need to try to remember “Salut à toutes et à tous.” That could be a useful phrase sometime. 

Duties versus Responsibilities

Last night I took the last exam in the Technical Rescuer - General series (which in NC is also combined with the Rope Rescue specialization). One of the multiple choice questions asked you whether certain things were DUTIES of the incident commander, or instead RESPONSIBILITIES.

These exams are often badly written. I have found them harder than the exams I took in graduate school, sometimes, just because of the bad writing by the exam authors. Sometimes the issue is that the questions are antiquated and haven't been replaced:

• Last night's exam also featured two questions about an acronym used in rope rescue, both the current one we were taught about and the old one they long ago replaced and no one had ever heard of before; 
• another exam featured a series of questions about a type of harness that was long ago discontinued by NFPA, and about which we therefore knew nothing; 
• a third exam had a Vietnam-era question about helicopters that hasn't been current in decades. 

Those questions don't necessarily feature bad writing, just outdated information that needs to be cleaned up but apparently never is. They could be fixed if there were ever a review.

What really gets to me is the logic problems in the exams that are created by authors not understanding how logic works. One question on an early test asked if a kind of rescue material should be replaced after exposure to temperatures above 160 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees, 220 degrees, or 240 degrees. Now logic will tell you that only 240 could be correct, as otherwise there would be multiple correct answers on a question that only accepts one. For example, if the correct answer were 220, then anything exposed to 240 should also be replaced because 240 > 220. 

However, 220 was in fact the correct answer, and the fact that 240 was also correct didn't bother the authors. The question could have been asked differently without creating that problem, which is why test authors should have some training in logic. "What is the standard for the maximum temperature beyond which these materials should be replaced?" would not have created the same issue.

Here too the real point of the question was to see if you had memorized the exact wording of the answer. There is no technical distinction in the literature between 'duty' and 'responsibility' that would justify including both answers in the test. If you look up the definition for 'responsibility,' you will find that the appropriate entry includes the word 'duty.' Either of these words would, in ordinary English, correctly describe the concept. However, one of them was right, and the other was counted towards failure of the exam.

I imagine this sort of thing comes up in many similar technical fields. I know it's something that the authors of the Law School Admissions Test take seriously, because they hired a friend of mine who is a professional logician to review their tests. At the technical school level, though, students have fewer resources and are unlikely to sue if they should wrongfully fail an exam. They're just working class people who are expected to put up with it, as they are often expected to put up with worse conditions in society. You failed? Eh, repeat the course. It won't hurt you to hear it again. 

Cyberpunk Update

Bionic hands are enjoying a significant improvement.

For the first time, a person with an arm amputation can manipulate each finger of a bionic hand as if it was his own. Thanks to revolutionary surgical and engineering advancements that seamlessly merge humans with machines, this breakthrough offers new hope and possibilities for people with amputations worldwide. A study presents the first documented case of an individual whose body was surgically modified to incorporate implanted sensors and a skeletal implant. A.I. algorithms then translated the user's intentions into movement of the prosthesis.

And, via Chicago Boyz, wearable devices are helping fight diabetes. 

UPDATE: Military computer chips with human and mouse brain tissue. 

Home in the High Country

It’s taken a day of travel, but I’ve returned home to the far blue mountains.* I won’t be here long; by the end of the month I’m due to wander out West for a time. For a few days, though, I’ll be here where things are familiar. 

* Louis L’amour made the worst pun I know of in all his work at the end of that novel, when the protagonist sees the far blue mountains,’but he knew not their appellation.’

A Visit with Uncle J

Longtime readers will remember Uncle Jimbo, former Green Beret and fellow BLACKFIVE blogger. I dropped in on him today while passing through Arlington. He has a new sign.

It’s hilarious in the context of his neighbors, who all have those “IN THIS HOUSE WE..” rainbow signs they probably got at their Unitarian or Methodist church. 

The Black Sea Deal

Russia suspended its participation in the Black Sea deal, which provided a grain corridor to the world from the war in Ukraine. Wheat prices jumped immediately, as they would given that Russia and Ukraine together provide a quarter of the world's supply. That said, the war has already lead to fluctuations. 

Traditional Conservatism on Parade

The Orthosphere pens the most genuinely conservative post I have read in many years: an argument in favor of natural slavery.

Conservatives, following Aristotle, get there from time to time; I think it's close to literally unthinkable for liberals, for better or worse. Liberals often have very good minds, so finding something they cannot -- or will not allow themselves to -- think is surprising. Perhaps one of them could entertain the idea over beer, in private conversation with a trusted friend. Perhaps it is just socially so unacceptable as to be unthinkable and incapable of expression even as a potential idea in a public context. 

The idea is severable from racism, and indeed should be severed from it: Aristotle was talking about his fellow Greeks, and the fictional Prime Minister the Orthosphere quotes about his fellow Britons. The issue has to do with virtue and vice, those who give themselves to one and those who give themselves to the other. It is an idea that has a long philosophical heritage, really at least as strong in Plato as in Aristotle, in Kant as in any Anglo-American thinker. 

Liberalism began by emancipating the heretics, proceeded to emancipate the serfs and slaves, turned its hand to emancipation of the women, and has most recently been striking the manacles from off the wrists of sexual deviants and thieves. [Link added for emphasis. -Grim]

There is a Pollyanna liberalism that believes emancipation must always be followed by improvement, that is full of childish self-confidence and hatred of restraint.  Like a child sulking and chaffing under the restraints of his father’s house, Pollyanna liberalism does not see that there are dreadful possibilities in freedom.  When a young man comes of age and is emancipated from the restraints of his father’s house, he soon discovers that he is free to stay up as late as he pleases, and also, if need be, to sleep on the street.  He soon realizes that he is now free to eat whatever he likes, and also, if need be, to eat nothing at all.

The dreadful possibilities of freedom become clear.

The idea is properly a significant challenge to those -- like myself -- who advocate for human freedom in the strongest terms. What should be done with those described? Plato's answer is a sort of ancient totalitarianism; Aristotle, a kind of slavery-for-their-own-good. Kant likes execution, frankly; he is high on the value of capital punishment. Probably I mostly like removing the protections that keep them from realizing the natural consequences of their actions, and letting them learn -- or letting them die.

What we've done instead is driven the idea out of the mind, which seems more and more popular as an approach. No good will come of that for certain. Hard ideas might breed hard men, but they might also engender thoughtful resolutions. Or both: we could do worse than having hard but thoughtful men, and probably will. 

IRR

These numbers are fairly small, which suggests to me that they already had a specific list in mind. The Inactive Ready Reserve is generally the fate of those whose enlistment has otherwise ended, but are contractually obligated to remain available in that way for a certain period (usually 4 years). This is not necessarily cause for alarm; it may be more to do with recruiting shortfalls leaving them lacking a few companies’ soldiery. 

Still, it looks like it is slated for Ukraine. Our continuing commitment to that conflict, which has already pushed a Democratic administration to endorse the cluster bombs they normally prefer to discuss as war crimes, has created an extended risk given that we are not formally a combatant in the war. 

An End

I would note that this is not for the base brand, but for its "Platinum" high ABV version. Still, I tend to agree with the assessment that losing COSTCO is a big deal. Whether or not any lessons will be learned remains to be seen. 

Maybe, though. This is the first big corporate property to die, rather than just to suffer a temporary setback, as a result of this foolishness. We'll see if that's enough to get their attention.

If you remember the movie, this happened right after William Wallace sacked York. Immediately after this scene, Longshanks muses that if Wallace can sack York, he can come after him, too. 

Longshanks responds with aggression; will international corporations likewise? More censorship, more government oppression of parent teacher organizations and grassroots political groups? Or will they sue for peace? 

Illusions of Moral Change

AVI asked earlier if we are experiencing an illusion of moral decline. There are arguments for and against this idea.

He presents a long comment as evidence that it might be, and evidence also that deniers are just looking at evidence they prefer to look at. I have a counterargument to that idea, which I've been making for some years. 

For some years I've argued that 'moral progress' is a mere illusion. Joseph W. and I used to fight about this, in that joyous and pleasant way in which we contested each other's ideas. My sense is that mostly people's values change by encountering other people -- ideas 'rub off,' as it were. Now people closer to you rub off on you more than people further away. It is possible to be distant in both time and space, such that people further away from you in time will look less like you than people closer. That means that we should ordinarily expect to see an illusion of progress, because (a) we take our own values to be right, and (b) the further back you go, the less people agree with us.

There are some obvious additional factors that make it easier or harder for people to 'rub off' on you: sharing a language makes it more likely at distance; belonging to a civilization makes it more likely that you will share at least some values with your ancestors, too. Still, by and large I think it's obvious that you would think of society as progressing morally simply by looking back and discovering that, the further away from yourself you go, the less people agree with your (obviously correct!) moral values.

A consequence of this reading is that the conservative and progressive moral projects are both illusions (but see the important exception at the link). Conservatives are always under the illusion that things are getting worse because there has been constant movement from a prior time they've marked out as an ideal: their childhood, the Victorian era, Arthur's Camelot, the Age of Muhammad and his Companions, the ancient Roman Republic. 

Progressives, by contrast, assume wrongly that there is moral progress in their direction just because the current age agrees with them and all prior ages disagree more and more. Thus, there is an arrow of morality that points in their direction.

Both of these views are illusions. 

However, there's an important empirical point AVI gets to and returns to as well: we can say that rates of violence, for example, goes up or down. That's not perfect; some violence is moral, and the loss of that kind of violence may worsen society. (Consider a society, like the present-day Canada, that bars violent self-defense. You may run from a criminal, but not resist him.) 

That kind of empirical consideration of morality is what I was getting at by the end of the linked post. 

I once heard a Buddhist argument that held something like: "To say that you have forgiven but not forgotten is to say that you have not forgiven." This is that argument in a developed form.

If you truly did forget, you would lose both any sense of moral progress, and any sense of moral crumbling. What would be left? Would it be enough?

There's a good debate in the comments of that post featuring many of you, dear readers. You might want to review what you thought at the time and see how it compares to what you might think now. For that matter, it might be helpful to write down what you think now first to see how it compares to what you thought then.

Highwaymen

This interview starts off with a very aggressive question from the journalist: can you imagine suggesting to Johnny Cash at any point in his career that he couldn’t fill a venue? He came close to calling the man a liar over it. 

Waylon, though, had the best response. 

The Highwaymen had four of my very favorite performers of all time, but I never was able to enjoy them as a group. They were too self conscious of standing at the end: it was mournful, more than anything else. I like this interview for the spirit, which was not so ready to concede the end. 

Dark Times

This is absolutely brilliant. pic.twitter.com/lpGWDkBFh7

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 9, 2023

Leavening

As I was browsing a number of articles about wild yeast, I read several that mentioned the early evidence of deliberate fermentation, including some kind of Chinese alcoholic drink from 7,000 B.C. and leavened Egyptian bread from 1,000 B.C. Considering that the Jews appear to have shown up on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean shortly after the catastrophic collapse of Bronze Age civilizations around 1,200 B.C., and considering also the Jews' complicated relationship with Egyptian culture during the next millennium, this reminded me of something that surprised me in the Biblical exegeses I've been working on in recent years at Project Gutenberg.

In both the Old and New Testaments, "leavening" has a strangely negative connotation of impurity and corruption. I'd always assumed that the point of unleavened Passover bread was that the homemakers were in a rush, but there's more to it than that. Part of the Passover ritual is a strenuous disinfection of the home from all leavening, not just so that the bread will be truly unleavened and therefore qualify for the ritual, but also apparently as a symbol of purification. Exodus 12:15, 13:6-7. Leviticus 2:11 forbids the burning of yeast on the altar at any time, not just during Passover. Both Jesus and St. Paul used leavening as a metaphor for spiritual or psychological infection that can start with a small fault and bloom until it consumes the person: hypocrisy in Matthew 6:6-12 and Luke 12:1, and sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 5:1-8.

For some reason this opprobrious attitude didn't extent to alcoholic fermentation, which the Jews apparently didn't connect closely with bread fermentation. The Jews never have thought much of drunkenness, but they don't react to alcohol with horror at impurity in the manner of temperance zealots. I have cousins who, in my youth, startled me by casually explaining that they wouldn't eat things like olives because they were produced by a variety of fermentation. The fermenting bacteria break down the bitter flavor in raw olives, without producing any mind-altering substances, but apparently even the presense of the word "ferment" was enough to make my cousins swear the whole thing off. They didn't object to leavened bread, however.

More Orienteering

Always a good way to spend a weekend. 

A heavily trafficked area of the West Wing

From PowerLine:

Is there no fingerprint or DNA on the baggie? Is video unavailable, as in the matter of Jeffrey Epstein’s death? This is probably not the toughest case in the world to “crack” — unless you don’t want to, or unless Inspector Clouseau is in charge of the investigation.

Sourdough

My lurking neighbor persuaded me to take some of the natural starter she began developing from local airborne yeast several years back. I've been experimenting with loaves this week and have managed today to produce a loaf with good strong sour flavor and a decent rise and crumb. The crust is outstanding.

Reason for the Season

Stay down, man

Revolutionary Colors

For Love of Treason

Happy Independence Day, the greatest day of the year— at least excluding religious holidays. 

Not too Sure About This

I really thought he’d like the river, but look at that face. 

 

The hot takes

After 24 hours to let the Supreme Court's partial ban on affirmative action sink in, the twin responses I'm seeing from the left are:

(1) Anyone can see that Justice Thomas couldn't have gotten where he is without affirmative action to prop him up--I mean, just look at his skin--and

(2) Legacy admissions seem pretty unfair, so what's the big deal with institutionalizing racism in admissions too?

I'd have more respect for Harvard et al. if they got rid of legacy admissions, too, but few of us will be supporting a general "no unfairness" Constitutional amendment, so it seems unlikely the Supreme Court will be asked to take care of that particular bit of dirty business for us. Those of us who object to legacy admission might consider not donating to universities that practice them. We could even pass federal legislation denying tax subsidies to universities that don't get it right. We don't have to embrace racism in order to get rid of legacy admissions.

A Busy Month

Between now and a month from now I will be finishing up the Technical Rescue certification series I've been pursuing since April. This will put me in night classes on Mondays and Wednesdays every week, and on two of the four weeks also on Fridays, as well as all day Saturdays and Sundays. This is of course in addition to my regular professional and family duties. 

If it's been a little quiet lately, it's because I'm busy. It's worthwhile stuff, however, that I think is not a waste of time. Still, it may be August before I can relax. 

Number 21 with a bullet

Some slight coverage of the Biden family corruption is making its way into mainstream news.

Jesus as Capricorn

I don't actually know anything about astrology, aside from the fact that I'm aware that the various 'signs' are supposed to align with dates, and my own supposed sign is ridiculously out of line with any facts about my character. Apparently the Capricorn dates line up with the Christmas holiday, though, so I guess you have to give old Kris the point as a matter of theology.

 All the same, the song reminds me of this bit by Johnny Paycheck in certain ways.

Is he wrong about any of that? Well, no; and yet, also, yes. Johnny Paycheck was much in need of grace. He once shot a man in the head because he was high on cocaine. Of course that's just the kind of person you ought to admit to the church if he's willing to come, exactly as he says. But it's also true that he's falling easily in on his grievances, rather than thinking on the mote -- or log -- in his own eye. 

Kyrie Eleison.

You Bet Your Life

More Marxism:

And more Foil Arms and Hog. No, really, it's good guidance on giving an acceptance speech in today's world.

Nonconventional Intelligence

Allegedly this stencil test fools 90% regardless of IQ.

No Idea

I have no idea what's going on in Russia, so here's Foil Arms and Hog:

And your nightly dose of Marxism:

Cone of Silence

Dad29 asks about the weird 'cone of silence' surrounding the Biden administration's obvious corruption.

Biden bragging about threatening the Ukrainians never raised any alarms in Washington, because it was the new normal. Hunter getting a no-show job at a foreign company raised no eyebrows because everyone was doing it....

Umnnnhhhh, yes.  Yes, indeed!

Where is "Clean Jeans" Paul Ryan?  Bill Barr, the self-proclaimed 'ultra-Catholic'?  We know McConnell can't possibly come out of his Red Chinese-owned shell on this, but what about Tester?  Tuberville?  Hawley? 

I'd like to add something else to that: Ukraine was the proximate cause of Trump's first impeachment. At that time we learned that the one thing the Congressional leadership would not tolerate was poking around with Ukraine and corruption.

This was all before the Russian war, but at the time there were claims that Pelosi and Romney also had family members working with Ukraine's gas and oil industry. Fact check organizations attempted to say this was dubious, although at least one of the claims remains unprovable either way: 

Pelosi did visit Ukraine in 2017 — as another video shows — in which he said in an interview he was visiting on behalf of an organization he was running called the Corporate Governance Initiative (he served as executive director). Hammill told us the visit was “a vacation at personal expense.” It’s unclear if the Corporate Governance Initiative — a company registered in Arizona with a stated purpose of helping organizations develop structures and policies — is still active. Attempts to contact it were unsuccessful.

Russia's war has only increased the opportunity for corruption, as vast sums of money -- we really have no idea how much, as the Pentagon has admitted it is billions of dollars off in its estimate and the intelligence budgets are black -- have flowed to various programs, classified and otherwise. 

The odds that members of Congress have had the opportunity to arrange kickbacks or other payoffs to themselves, friends, or family are close to 100%. The odds that our Congress' members are above taking advantage of such opportunities? Eh, somewhat less than 100%.

Another reason next year's elections cannot be lost by the establishment is that it might open up the opportunity to look under the hood. They dodged the bullet last time, but only through an unwinnable impeachment coupled with a trial designed to make it look like treason to try to pressure Ukraine to get answers about it.

Cracking more culinary codes

This is my year for finding out how to make things at home that are hard to find in restaurants out here in the boonies. We have a Vietnamese restaurant that makes a wonderful pho, but it's not open on the days I'm most likely to be in town. So I acquired a pho cookbook, followed the directions, and produced a fantastic stock. This one was redfish stock, made from the frames that our fisherman neighbor discards after filleting, but the same technique would work on chicken stock: just simmer it for a while with a chunk of ginger cut in half, a cinnamon stock, some anise pods, some coriander seeds, and some fennel seeds, plus a bit of salt and sugar.

The cookbook advised cooking the shrimp and the rice noodles separately in plain water, but I was disappointed in the results: too flat. With the other half of the fish stock today, I cooked scallops and a new brand of rice noodles right in the stock, then towards the end added the bean sprouts, a cross-cut Thai pepper (bushels of them coming from the garden now), and sliced mushrooms. Squeeze in a copy of lime wedges, add some cilantro and Thai basil if you've got it, and you're done.

Soon I'll try again, with chicken stock. My limited little local grocery store charmed me to my toes by stocking chicken feet this week. Chicken feet make great stock.

The apology ad Anheuser Busch should have run

The Bee

Is this for real?

Is Russia cracking, or is this story a crock?

Solstice

High summer is upon us.

Laws Are For The Little People.

 The Hunter Biden plea deal proves that in our two-tiered justice system, only the connected are protected.

The Study of Beauty

 These give me hope; in spite of the ugliness of contemporary music and society, at least a few of the young study to keep the secret fire alive. 

An Important Day

Today marks both the 21st birthday of my only son, and also my 24th wedding anniversary. 

I spoke to my son this morning and congratulated him on making it to legal adulthood. "It only gets harder from here," I warned.

"Oh, I know," he said, which was the worst possible thing to say. Thank God he does not know how much harder it gets. 

Unfortunately all the planned festivities are offline because my truck decided to break down last night -- initially it looks like more computer troubles, the bane of my existence because I can easily repair simple mechanical problems -- and it is going to pour rain for days here in western North Carolina. Nobody's much inclined to ride motorcycles in a downpour for hours. 

It's a big day anyway. 

UPDATE: Relatively good news about the truck. In spite of showing all the signs of a computer issue, it was a mechanical failure after all. Got it back running this afternoon. 

Top of the Park

Happy Father’s Day.  

A Pleasant Day in Western North Carolina

Yesterday my wife and I rode out to Franklin, where the annual Scottish festival was underway. Ethnic festivals are always interesting in terms of what they have to say about the story the group likes to tell about itself and the kind of people they are. Scottish heritage festivals invariably feature Highland strength sports -- I believe the sheaf toss is underway in the background of this photo.

In addition, there was free axe throwing, and Atlas stone lifting. Stone lifting is one of the ancient strength sports of Scotland, which is also a major sport even today in Iceland. These are with natural stones, however. The Atlas stone is a spherical 'stone' made of concrete, which is quite hard to lift because it wants to roll out of your arms. It is a regular feature of Strongman competitions. There were about six of us there who were both Strongman competitors and also regulars at Scottish Highland Games, and we had fun lifting the big 250 pound stone. (My inner arms are quite abraded this morning, a feature that is called 'stone kisses' in the games.)

Then my wife and I rode up through the Cullasaja Gorge, and through various mountain back roads.

Cullasaja Falls

We went to both the city of Highlands and the unincorporated town of Cashiers. There we stopped for dinner at the Whiteside Brewing Company in order to attend a concert I'd heard about. This was by The Maggie Valley Band, which is built around a pair of sisters. They sing Americana with a psychedelic twinge. Their stuff is available on YouTube and Spotify, though I have to admit that the polished stuff there doesn't sound as good to me. Live, they have a very nice sound that is reminiscent of Mazzy Star. 

They know their stuff, too. They covered standards like Jolene and The Long Black Veil, as well as their own work. Every time they'd start a song I'd be wrong about which one they were going to do, because they were adept enough to adapt standard songs to other melodies or meters, giving a pleasant element of surprise to the listening audience. I'd still know the song, if it was one of the covers, but it'd be set to a tune I expected to be a different song.

Overall, a nice day for riding.

More Lies

The Firearms Policy Coalition is a fighting organization. 

If you include Americans under one, the leading cause of death is abortion. In fact, if unborn Americans count, abortion is the leading cause of death for all Americans. Heart disease is right around 700,000/year; abortion, per Guttmacher (which compiles its statistics through a direct count made by contacting all providers in the country) is over 960,000.

Just to keep the numbers consistent, there were about 48,000 gun deaths for all Americans in 2021, the vast majority of which were suicides rather than crimes or accidents. Accidental gun deaths are fairly rare these days, especially among children.

Riding Weather

Tomorrow we ride!

Well, one of us. 

An Ancient, Octagonal Sword

Found in Germany, it is extremely old.  

Come Off It, Washington Post

Today's attack on Americana is an attempt to tar the Gadsden flag by comparing it to... some other flag that nobody has used in a hundred and sixty-three years.

The rattlesnake motif, along with "Don't Tread on Me," have been widely used by Americans for various purposes over various years. My favorite version -- which is on my annual Independence Day post, the flag pictured on the right atop the sidebar -- is the flag of the Veteran's Exempt. These guys fought in the American Revolution under the Declaration of Independence. They were Americans under the Articles of Confederation. They were Americans under the Constitution. Then, as men too old to be drafted in the war of 1812, they volunteered and fought for the American project again. Nobody is more American than they were: to date, they are the only ones of all of us to have lived under all the American systems, and to have supported all of them.

It is also the only American flag to feature a skull and crossbones, which is particularly appropriate given the long connection of pirates and privateers to the success of our democratic ideals. This is likewise not popularly recognized by the elites of the nation, but it is so all the same.

A Materialist Looks at Chesterton

One does not expect to find an essay praising G. K. Chesterton that begins with this sort of assertion.

When you die — when these organized atoms that shimmer with fascination and feeling — disband into disorder to become unfeeling stardust once more, everything that filled your particular mind and its rosary of days with meaning will be gone too. From its particular vantage point, there will be no more meaning, for the point itself will have dissolved — there will only be other humans left, making meaning of their own lives, including any meaning they might make of the residue of yours.  

These are the thoughts coursing through this temporary constellation of consciousness as I pause at the lush mid-June dandelion at the foot of the hill on my morning run — the dandelion, now a fiesta of green where a season ago the small sun of its bloom had been, then the ethereal orb of its seeds, now long dispersed; the dandelion, existing for no better reason than do I, than do you — and no worse — by the same laws of physics beyond meaning: these clauses of exquisite precision punctuated by chance.

Nevertheless this is an essay that particularly appreciates Chesterton's insights into the wonder of the world. The author cites his autobiography, but ironically the admired thoughts are nowhere better expressed than in one especially astonishing chapter of Orthodoxy: "The Ethics of Elfland." I am likewise inclined to agree that the issues he addressed there have never been better described than by him, and that they are exactly as he says of fundamental importance.

Indeed the autobiographical quote the author pulls makes a lot of optimists and pessimists right after making the point of astonishment at natural beauty, a move that follows the narrative structure of Orthodoxy exactly. Chesterton goes right on from "The Ethics of Elfland" to "The Flag of the World." If the essay's author should wish to consider the issue both further and deeper, that work is the one to consult. 

Chesterton himself is thus described: "philosopher, impassioned early eugenics opponent, prolific author of several dozen books, several hundred poems and short stories, and several thousand essays." I think Chesterton himself might have lead with "Catholic" or "Christian," perhaps even with "lover and husband," but certainly it is pleasing to see his opposition to eugenics correctly recognized as deserving of praise. 

The Flag Code

Although part of the US Code, the Flag Code is a non-enforceable law because it lacks any sort of punishment. This happens more often than you might expect. A lot of laws governing the behavior of the government itself lack any sort of punitive clauses, so that -- for example -- if a government should conduct its election in an unconstitutional manner, there's just nothing to be done about it. The Flag Code is like that.

Nor was it any surprise to me to see articles to the effect the Biden Administration had violated it by presenting the Trans-* flag in the position of  honor in a vertical flag arrangement. I was more surprised by Forbes' claim that this wasn't a violation because, however the vertical flags were arranged, there was an American flag atop the building that was in an even more elevated position and that somehow saved the day.

Is Forbes right about that? They are not. The ordering of displays considers the display as a group, not the presence or absence of other flags that are not connected to the display. If I were to arrange a display of fifty national flags that put America's in the last place, the fact that there was a flag somewhere else nearby that was on a taller pole wouldn't have any bearing on my display's intent or effect.

The flagpole atop the building was not part of the group that made up this display, and thus is not relevant to the question. It is a permanent feature, whereas this display was arranged as a unit for a particular event at a particular time for a particular purpose. That is why the offending flags were always photographed together: they were a display meant to be seen together, to create their particular effect. Nobody noticed the flag pole twenty feet up because it wasn't part of the display or the event; it was just a permanent feature of the building. 

The fact is that the question never occurred to these people, for whom the matter is not even of idle interest and never has been. It never occurred to them that they shouldn't put the Trans-* flag at the center of the display, since that was of course the center of the event. It never occurred to them that the United States flag should not be displayed as supporters of the Trans-* flag, as the whole point of the event was in fact that the United States government was in support of the Trans-* movement. It makes perfect sense according to the symbolic logic of their actual system of beliefs, which just don't happen to be the same ones that were held by the earlier generation of Americans who wrote the Flag Code. They are not Americans in the same sense.

Buying Your Way Out of the Constitution

“This report makes it clear that the government continues to think it can buy its way out of constitutional protections using taxpayers’ own money," says Chris Baumohl, a law fellow at [Electronic Privacy Information Center].

That's a good line. It's a nice statement of the problem, which the article explores: the government has decided it needs no warrants for persistent, universal surveillance -- even of people never suspected of any crime -- just as long as it buys the data on the market. If your name ever comes up later, well, they'll already have a ready file with which to prosecute you. 

This Rescue Brought to You by the Number 8

I hadn't realized how many times the Number 8 comes up in this stuff. Just in rescue knots:

The Figure 8 Knot

The Figure 8 Bend

The Figure 8 On a Bight (aka "Figure 8 Double Loop")

The Figure 8 Follow Through (almost the same as the Figure 8 Bend, but tied with one rope as a hitch rather than as a means of joining two ropes, which is what a 'bend' is)

The Figure 8 Directional Loop

But wait, there's more! The rappelling descender of choice for distances of not more than 75-100 feet is "The Rescue 8," so called because of the rabbit-ear design that prevents the rope from slipping over the top of the larger 8 into a girth hitch (which we, in the old Boy Scout days, used to called the 'Lark's Head,' but which is also called a 'cow hitch').

A Rescue 8 descent device

I feel like I should put up one of those Sesame Street videos: "This Rescue brought to you by the letters E, M, S and the Number 8."

Heads must have rolled

Someone at Fox News must have been having fun with the Chyron machine. For nearly half a minute the fresh new post-Dominion-settlement face of the formerly conservative news outlet was marred by the statement "WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED." Fox quickly reported that “the chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.” I'll bet it was!

Who can forget the rogue teleprompter operators who got ditzy left coast news anchors to announce with a straight face the purported names of the pilots of the Asiana Flight 214, including "Sum Ting Wong and Wi Tu Lo"?

Make Way, Women!

Lesbian: 

A non-man attracted to non-men. While past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label.

I was going to link this to the old joke about the biker who realized that he was a lesbian, but he's actually still excluded from this definition. It's only males who aren't men who are now eligible to be lesbians. Women have to move over to make room for them, here as elsewhere. 

Red Balloon Work Ad

RedBalloon.work seems worthwhile if you're looking for a non-woke work environment.

It could complement PublicSq, a site for shopping at businesses that align with more conservative values (or for selling, if you own such a business).

Update: Just because it's a good story about work, here's "Welding in the Desert."

A Maia on the Bed

Gandalf with halo. 

A Biography of Plato

We know little about the famous philosopher for certain, including whether or not he was ever enslaved -- or, if so, by whom:

Contrary to many people’s perception of him, Plato did not spend his entire life listening to Socrates philosophising in colonnades in Athens or writing dialogues meandering through complex ideas. He was once captured in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and put up for sale in a slave market....

The enslavement allegedly occurred while Plato was travelling home from Sicily in 384 BC. A number of ancient biographers claim that the philosopher boarded a ship with a Spartan who enslaved him on the orders of the tyrant of Syracuse, but Plato’s new biographer, Robin Waterfield, suggests it’s more likely that he was on board a merchant ship which caught the eye of pirates. The seas were full of marauders in this period and it is entirely possible that Plato sailed into treacherous waters. His luck changed after he was spotted in the market by an admirer who agreed to pay a ransom to secure his release.

Plato never mentioned any of this in his own writings, but then he rarely wrote about himself at all... Waterfield is reluctant to dismiss the episode of Plato’s capture as pure fallacy because the circumstances are credible and the chronology seems to fit with what we know of his movements.

Well, the story certainly isn't a fallacy because a fallacy is an error in logic, not an error of fact. That is on the reviewer, though, not the author. The author sounds like he's done a creditable job at constructing a history of Plato, which is a task well worth doing even if it is not always as exciting as the stories about Plato. 

Computers Still Learning

I was reading a piece about GPT and humor the other day (which I won't bother to look up again to link because I don't remember where I saw it and all it said is what I'm about to tell you) that said that these large language models are good at explaining jokes, but not good at making new ones. It's interesting how those are different projects. Analytical understanding of why something is funny really is different from the ability to craft an emotional experience that will provoke laughter. It's easier after the fact to process why it worked, and harder to do the thing.

Whatever Spotify is using to categorize songs is imperfect in a similar way. It likes to do 'mood' playlists, and it often produces notable failures. For example, on today's "Romantic" playlist the first song was this one:

That's a beautifully sung song, but it is not a romantic song. It's about the heartbreaking failure of a romance.

Likewise, they recently had a "Happy" playlist that headlined with this piece:

This song kind of sounds happy, because of the band's signature strategy (which I believe they adopted from the Blues Brothers) of marching through blues pieces in major chords. It's definitely not a happy song, though: it's about a man who is dying of alcoholism, and finds himself powerless to stop it.

I guess it's good that it's still easy to fool the Terminator.

Bluegrass Genocide

I realize not everyone here reads Instapundit, but here's a piece linked there (by one of Glenn's co-bloggers) that merits attention.

In his terrific Shiny Herd substack, Ted Balaker interviewed me on the mania for eugenic sterilization of those deemed “unfit to reproduce” for the first 75+ years of the 20th century. As Ted and I discussed:

“They were forced to undergo hysterectomies. Their tubes were tied and they were given vasectomies, sometimes without anesthesia.”

The scientific and political communities in America were solidly behind the project. Those performing the sterilizations were considered humanitarian heroes, and academics who questioned the idea were subject to vilification, loss of employment, and loss of academic funding. The press and political activists formed a solid phalanx to protect the pro-eugenics side....

Then I heard of the Family Planning Services Act and began to wonder if there was in 1971 a federally-funded bias toward sterilizing poor young women in Appalachia. Is this why I never had siblings and face being the sole caretaker and provider for my aging mother?

But I can only wonder because I can’t find any research or data or even articles inquiring about changes in birth and sterilization rates among women in Appalachia before/after the Family Planning Services Act took hold.

Maybe the Act didn’t make a difference at all. Or maybe it was a quiet Bluegrass Genocide....

This writer’s expression, “bluegrass genocide,” is a marvel of imagery, simplicity, and power. Nowhere to be found on the internet (till now), the term lashes an arcadian adjective to a dystopian noun. Just two words and five syllables describe a sweeping saga, imparting both sense of place and sense of horror. It starkly captures the inhumanity that, for the better part of the last century, exerted a vise grip over science, medicine, culture, politics, journalism, and public policy—the notion that experts are entitled to play God with lives in pursuit of their favored social goals. The writer’s addition of “quiet”—”a quiet Bluegrass Genocide”—makes the events described all the more vile.

Sometimes, the word “genocide” is used in a hyperbolic and, in my view, inappropriate ways, but here, the term is more than apt. 

Usually one hears about the eugenics movement in terms of the eugenics crowd's fascination with the idea of 'race,' and the desire to limit the growth of 'races' that they deemed inferior; or one hears about the sterilization of those deemed mentally inferior. Here, though, it's really often just poor folks from Appalachia; useless eaters in the eyes of the Wise of that era, I suppose.

Conan the Puppy Update

The Great Montrose

A kind of week-late addendum to the discussion of pirates and outlaws: one of the points AVI brought up was that pirates were all but certain to be executed if caught, which might suggest that there was a particular infamy associated with their ways. Yet the greatest of all men might be executed torturously and grievously, even the Great Montrose. (Well, even Jesus.)

Montrose studied at age twelve at the college of Glasgow under William Forrett who later tutored his sons. At Glasgow, he read Xenophon and Seneca, and Tasso in translation.... The king signed a warrant for his Marquessate and appointed Montrose Lord Lieutenant of Scotland, both in 1644. A year later in 1645, the king commissioned him captain general. His military campaigns were fought quickly and used the element of surprise to overcome his opponents even when sometimes dauntingly outnumbered....

Highlanders had never before been known to combine, but Montrose knew that many of the West Highland clans, who were largely Catholic, detested Argyll and his Campbell clansmen, and none more so than the MacDonalds who with many of the other clans rallied to his summons. The Royalist allied Irish Confederates sent 2000 disciplined Irish soldiers led by Alasdair MacColla across the sea to assist him. The Irish proved to be formidable fighters.

In two campaigns, distinguished by rapidity of movement, he met and defeated his opponents in six battles....

The fiery enthusiasm of the Gordons and other clans often carried the day, but Montrose relied more upon the disciplined infantry from Ireland. His strategy at Inverlochy, and his tactics at Aberdeen, Auldearn and Kilsyth furnished models of the military art, but above all his daring and constancy marked him out as one of the greatest soldiers of the war. His career of victory was crowned by the great Battle of Kilsyth on 15 August 1645. Such was the extent of his military fame that King Louis XIV offered him the position of Marshal of France.

He fell into the power of his political enemies and was hanged, his body dismembered and buried in unhallowed ground. Years later Charles II had his body moved to a church and gave a lavish funeral, but that didn't do anything to repair the execution. Bear in mind that this is almost exactly the same time -- and the same king, Chares II -- that was rewarding Sir Henry Morgan with a knighthood and governorship of Jamaica.  

Here's a song about the Great Montrose. The particular battle is apocryphal, but of a piece with the actual battles he so frequently won.

Love Doesn't Equal Love

The Orthosphere objects to the current formulation.

A neighbor flies a colorful flag. “Love is Love” it proclaims. Since it is merely a dogmatic assertion with no argument provided, it seems somehow aggressive. Worse. It is aggressive. Like all other utterances, it must be understood in context. In context, it is a poke in the eye of anyone favoring heterosexual adult romantic love. Ironically, that kind of love one is welcome to attack. In that case, perhaps the slogan should be “Love is Oppressive.” ...

The image on the flag is of a central huge rainbow-colored clenched fist surrounded by little open palms with love hearts on them. I know of no symbolism whereby balling up your first means love.

The rhetorical flourish of the bumper sticker that simply says " = " was the point at which I realized that they were going to win this fight. It's simple, requires no explanation, and although it is quite terribly wrong one needs a thousand words to explain why. They didn't need any words at all. 

The gay marriage thing has worked out a lot better than I feared it would, given that it represented a massive change to a fundamental social organization. It hasn't, as far as I can tell, caused any problems at all. I don't mention this to re-open that fight, which was lost and fortunately has not been as destructive as we warned that it might be. 

Rather, the point is just to clarify that the mathematical expression of equality is not the right use of the notion of equality in politics or in the personal relationships between individuals. Love is not love: think of any two people you love, and you'll find the differences immediately. I love my mother; I loved my father. The content of the emotional relationship was quite different, for me and for everyone who has ever loved. It's not a 1=1, A=A case, love; it is neither mathematical nor strictly logical.

When we talk about citizens being equal, we don't mean that they're exactly alike or even roughly equivalent. It is not a case like 2+2=2x2=4x1. One citizen may be an astronaut and a Ph.D.; the other one may be a crackhead. They are definitely not equals in most respects. There is only one way in which they really are equals, which is that they were alike endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights that the government's sole legitimate purpose is to protect. In that way, they really are equals: and they are equals not because of any qualities of their own, but because the endowment from on high was bestowed equally upon them.

We see something similar in the same field: "Transwomen are women." To set aside the empirical truth of that proposition entirely, I am struck by the fact that the statement itself is logically self-refuting. Two categories are being discussed, W and tW. We instantly know that they are not the same category; tW is at best a subset of W. (Many would argue it isn't even that, empirically, but that issue is being set aside here.) There are definitely members of the set W that aren't members of tW. That being the case, the sets are not "equal" -- here the term is used in its strict mathematical sense -- but distinct. The assertion that tW=W on the lines that A=A is obviously false. 

The clever rhetorical destruction of distinctions is not the font of justice, nor wisdom, nor right. It is, if anything, their enemy. Justice is more likely to be found in careful, disciplined thought and reason. I mean no one any harm by saying this; it is not an expression of malice, let alone hatred. It is simply my duty as a philosopher to stand up for clarity of thought.

RIP Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson has died at the age of 93. Robertson is a sept of the Clan Donnachaidh, my own, which is indeed sometimes called Clan Robertson. As such I always thought of him as a distant relative. 

On days like this I am always taken a bit aback by the hateful speech that pours out of the mouths of people who I know think of themselves as tolerant, thoughtful, and decent. Indeed, mostly they are; they just aren’t immune to hate, even though in most contexts they would regard hate as the greatest of evils. 

Cowboy Fire/Rescue

In tonight’s episode, Grim rescues some horses that had found their way out onto a twisty mountain road in the middle of the night.

We were on our way back from rappeling training in Transylvania County when I saw some beautiful white horses (grey, technically) kicking up their heels in the storm. They weren't hard to herd home. A little push and they showed me the way to the gap they'd forced in their fence. Another push and they ran back in. I fixed their fence as well as I could with bare hands.

This morning I contacted one of our firefighters who lives in the part of the district. He said that he knows the family and will let them know to take care of the fence. Hopefully that sets it right.

Cracking more code

We're thinking of doing a banh mi smorgasbord for a July 4th weekend BBQ. I got a cookbook in the mail and tried its recipe, and sure enough, lovely porpoise-shaped crusty rolls for sandwiches.

All I accomplished today was the roll, not any of the recipes for pâté or one of the Vietnamese-style sausages or cold cuts. So I just made a basic ham sandwich with garden tomatoes and sweet pickles. For the spread I used ordinary mayo tarted up with some homemade sweet hot chile sauce, which was great.

My lurking neighbor makes a fabulous wild-yeast sourdough that's nice and chewy, really my favorite bread. I don't know how to make that kind of lovely artisanal bread yet, but it turns out that all the basic instant-yeast breads are pretty easy. For banh mi, you don't really want a seriously crusty, chewy bread anyway.

I tried to order some Kaiser rolls through the mail but thought I had failed, so I found a recipe and ingredients and was about to try them next. Today, however, a dozen Kaiser rolls arrived, so we'll need to work through those before I bake. My lurking neighbors having absconded to their Oklahoma cabin for several weeks, I don't have as much help eating this stuff as I might usually have. They really need to get back here. Anyway, we're going to make hamburgers this week with some of the rolls, and in the meantime have found room in our tiny freezer for the rest. We don't trust ourselves with a big freezer. We've seen what happens.

First X-Ray of a Single Atom

There are size limits to knowledge; for example, we can’t say much about the world as it exists smaller than the electron scale because electrons are the smallest things we know how to manipulate. Thus, an electron microscope works on stuff electrons bounce off of, but not on stuff so small that they push it out of the way. 

Here’s a size limit being transcended. Pretty neat stuff. 

I'm Getting Too Old For This

Canada reshuffles its acronyms.

2SLGBTQI+ terminology and acronyms are continuously evolving. In 2016, the Government of Canada began using the term ‘LGBTQ2.’ The term was applied to the name of the LGBTQ2 Secretariat, the LGBTQ2 Community Capacity Fund, and LGBTQ2 Projects Fund, among other initiatives. LGBTI is often used in an international context. 2SLGBTQQIA+ is the acronym adopted by the 2SLGBTQQIA+ Committee, which contributed to the 2021 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and the 2SLGBTQQIA+ People National Action Plan.

During the engagement process, 2SLGBTQI+ communities in Canada called for the acronym used by the Government of Canada to be updated. The Government of Canada will adopt and encourage the use of 2SLGBTQI+ as a more inclusive term. This includes changing the name of the LGBTQ2 Secretariat to the 2SLGBTQI+ Secretariat, which is the title used throughout this Action Plan.

The military also loves acronyms, and frequently reshuffles and/or reuses them. The intelligence community, likewise (and probably because its largest component is the Defense Intelligence Agency). There can be confusion when members of different branches or levels of organization meet and find that a simple acronym means different things to different people. There has been a longstanding joint process to try to resolve this as much as possible, but especially at working levels easy acronyms just get reused: CAB, for example, has 38 possible meanings in the military context according to this acronym finder. Several of them are very commonly employed, like "Combat Aviation Brigade," "Civil Affairs Battalion" (the finder lists 'brigade' there too, which is a further confusion possible here) and "Combat Action Badge." And those are all from the Army!

No one is probably ever going to reuse 2SLGBTQI+, at least. But good luck remembering it, especially if it's going to change every few years. Inclusivity as a goal has to be balanced with the needs of concise communication. Very quickly this kind of thing makes communication impossible. Ultimately the most inclusive thing would be to include absolutely everyone, so instead of an acronym we should just mention everyone we want to talk about by name -- and, since names can also be repeated, add their street address. By the time you finished doing that, you'd have forgotten what you wanted to say about them.