Preparerent Se Viriliter Et Sapienter

Via Lars Walker (who notes that Troll Valley is now available as an iBook, if any of you are devotees -- apparently no links are required), a modestly large online version of the complete Bayeux Tapestry.

If you don't read Latin, you can find scene-by-scene translations of the text here.

The "Zweep" of Our Engines

The inimitable Iowahawk takes on the second annual preposterous "Detroit is A-OK" Superbowl spot:

Okay, yeah, so this isn't Detroit, it's actually New Orleans. So sue me. We were supposed to film this in Detroit, but GM rented it out to film their Chevy Truck Apocalypse ad.

I thought he was kidding about filming in New Orleans, but I guess not.

Proof that Gingrich Really Is Smart

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), engaged in a tit-for-tat race for the primary wins, will be addressing this CPAC conference in the grand ballroom, giving impassioned speeches in an 11th-hour effort to convince conservatives that each is the right candidate to defeat President Obama. 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will be making his case over pizza and happy hour brews. 

The Newt 2012 campaign distributed a flier... leading up to the big, bold event: a pizza party with Newt at a nearby Italian kitchen on Connecticut Avenue from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

“There will be $2 beers, too,” the volunteer told me.

As is well known, all the real progress at conventions and conferences happens at the bar afterwards.

The War in the Mind

A remarkable post on martial arts called The Pleasure of Drowning deals with the self-deception that comes from teaching your students how to fight you.  Here is a master of Aikido whose students have learned that they had best evade his every hint if they are to avoid a painful reprisal:



And here is what happened when he faced another master, who did not have that barrier of fear in the mind.



The author says that the students were complicit, but in fact they probably had each learned painful lessons in the face of the master, so that they were eager to avoid each of his strokes.  The competitor who had learned his own art did not come up with that fear of the master, and so beat him with ease.

There is a lesson here; there are several.  What are they?

An Invitation

I've written a small work of Arthurian fiction, on the order of a modest novel.  I think it would benefit from the critical eye of careful readers, and their healthy feedback.  If any of you would be interested, please let me know and I will arrange to send you a copy of the book.

On the Stakes in the Current Election

You've doubtless seen the news from yesterday; obviously I am pleased to see Mr. Santorum do well.  The key thing about yesterday's events, though, is not that they change the race all that much:  they put Mr. Santorum in the lead in terms of the number of states won, but given the structure of the primary that has no bearing on who actually becomes the nominee.

What it may do is give him the airtime he needs to become better known to the voters.  There is a certain sense in which our archetypes about how stories should be told influence our view of the world.  News stories about elections almost always take on the form of The Favorite and The Underdog; this race so far has been chiefly about competition for the role of The Underdog.  If yesterday cements Mr. Santorum in that role, we'll be ready to tell the story; much of The Favorite's strength comes from the fact that he has had no clear challenger, but rather a series of characters moving in and out of the role.

Though I often write about elections, it is not my habit to participate more than by voting.  This year may be different.  We are seeing a substantial fracture in the Democratic coalition because of the Obama administration's move to force Catholic charities to do things that are sins according to Catholic doctrine.  Much has been written about that lately, and I don't have more to add to it than to say that it is an important question in determining the degree to which we expect religion's submission to the state.  It is a difficult moral question even for Army chaplains who have binding oaths in both directions; but private citizens engaged in a religious charity have only one such binding obligation, and it is not to the state.

This is an attempt to redefine a basic part of the bargain at the root of our social contract.  John Locke wrote of his desire to see churches give up all coercive force to the state, in return for freedom from coercion in matters of faith.  The state's lane does not include using its coercive force to command a voluntary religious society into sin.  This is something we ought all to oppose, and I think Mr. Santorum is uniquely placed to do so.  (However, in fairness, I would like to note that Mr. Romney's organization believes its record on the same issue in MA has been distorted in the press; scroll to "Another false claim" for his perspective on the matter.)

We have always opposed the Affordable Health Care Act, precisely because massive Federal involvement in health care entails loss of freedom in the most intimate areas of our lives.  The loss of practical religious freedom is only the first such command.  If we are not successful, others will follow.

Medieval Romance

This begins with the reading of a section from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original Old English.  It's always fascinating to listen to Old English read aloud:  it's almost intelligible, but -- without training and study -- just beyond comprehension.  Middle English often is comprehensible if read aloud, but our modern language depends so much on the French influence from the Norman period that the Old English escapes us.



You can get a closer look at some of those beautiful manuscripts at the exhibition's website.  If you happen to be in Oxford, the exhibition is free to attend; but alas, I imagine I will not be able to go.

Riding Home

I took a ride over to the ancestral home to join my father and mother, and my sister who happened to be in town, in watching the Super Bowl yesterday.  Here are some of the sights I grew up with.

 The forbidding face of Yonah Bald.  "Yonah" is a Cherokee word that means "bear."  I did my first rappelling on those rocks.

North Georgia College & State University, Georgia's Military College.  I spent a lot of time there as a young man, because my mother worked there and also pursued one of her degrees there.  It is located in the mountain-top city of Dahlonega, whose name comes from the Cherokee word for "Golden" because the nation's first gold rush happened there.  Some of the local gold makes up the roof of the college building in the background.

One of James Vann's taverns, a few yards from the Etowah river and not very much farther from the home where I grew up.  "Chief" Vann was the son of a Scottish fur trader and a Cherokee mother who was involved in a murderous raid against white settlers during the Chickamauga Wars.  He became rich and powerful through taverns, ferries and trading posts along the first Federal Road to pierce the Georgia mountains.  He burned one of his slaves alive for stealing, having hung a female slave by her thumbs to make her name the thief.  He also fought, and won, a famous mounted duel.

And you shall sit and spin

I said that I would marry,

And she would be my bride,

And alone we should not tarry,

And twenty things beside;

"I'll plough and sow and reap and mow

And you shall sit and spin,

Singing, 'How d'you do, and how d'you do,

And how d'you do' again."

Our annual Oysterfest went off brilliantly last night (pictures later). Our last guests have just departed, leaving behind a spinning wheel they are selling on behalf of a friend, which I intend to buy. I got some quick lessons before they left. No one element of the process of spinning a mass of wool into nice, even yarn is very difficult, but it will take some time learning to do them all at once. If I concentrate on the treadle, I can time the downstroke to coincide with the wheel's just turning over the top, so that it doesn't turn in reverse -- but then I've taken my attention off of the job of "drafting" (pulling) the end of the wool ball out into the very thin wisp that takes the spin. If I concentrate on drafting, I lose track of the treadle, or forget to pinch onto the wool at the right spot, or forget to let the wheel pull the spun portion onto the bobbin, or the completed yarn slips off the bobbin altogether and snarls. Each of these tasks must become more automatic before they can be aggregated smoothly.

I'm already eyeing my longer-haired dog as a potential source of wool. The shorter-haired dog, as you can see above, is eyeing the device with some suspicion.

We don't mow, as a rule, since we have nothing to say to lawns. I wonder, though, if I can persuade my husband to do all of the plowing, sowing, and reaping if I promise to do all the spinning? It seems like a good deal from my end.

But before I get to swallowed up in this new craft, I must finish Lars's book, which I am particularly enjoying. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, a feat I accomplished only by stealing moments from our hectic week preparing for Oysterfest.

The Crusader President

Now here is something I didn't know:  Rick Santorum is a Knight of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta.

The Rondel of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

That Order is the oldest living chivalric order in the world; to be admitted is a very high honor indeed.  There are some consequences to it, however, for the direction of US foreign policy at a time when relations between the West and the Islamic World are at a delicate moment.

In general, Muslims respect deep faith in Christians as with others.  George W. Bush, for all his cowboy image, enjoyed the respect if not the trust of much of the Islamic world on just these grounds.  We can also reasonably observe that President Obama, for all that he was supposed to be more acceptable to Muslim world because of his Indonesian upbringing and Muslim stepfather, has not demonstrated much success in leveraging that supposed advantage to obtain improved relations.

I obviously cannot hold it against a man that he should belong to an Order that I greatly admire, and whose history inspires the highest respect.  Still, I wanted to put it out there for our discussion.  What do you think?

The Way of All Beauty

[H]e had searched by the stream by which she had prayed to the stones, and the pool where she prayed to the stars; he had called her name up every tower, and had called it wide in the dark, and had had no answer but echo; and so he had come at last to the witch Ziroonderel."Whither?" he said, saying no more than that, that the boy might not know his fears. Yet Orion knew. 

And Ziroonderel all mournfully shook her head. "The way of the leaves," she said. "The way of all beauty." 

-Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Where is Europe going?



The economic argument here is not entirely convincing, but it's also not what interests me about the piece.  What I do find interesting is the way that it lines up into a story with heroes and villains, and the villains are framed in ways that have been persuasive and deadly to Europeans past.  It is a story of Catholic versus Protestant, of the torment of Europe by an oppressive Germany represented by a black eagle.

What we are seeing in Europe is the development of a narrative that will justify the refusal by the Greeks, the Irish and the other debtor nations to submit to discipline.  It is a narrative that has both ethnic and religious justifications; and if that were not enough, it has justifications based on class thrown in as well.  Thus it has all three of the poisons that have led to Europe's great wars:  the poison of religious division that brought the Thirty Years War, the poison of nationalism that brought the World Wars, and the poison of anti-capitalism that brought the Communists to power in the Cold War.

And yet, though the claim is not entirely convincing, it is neither entirely wrong.  The claim that Europe is moving from democracy to 'bank-ocracy' is right in an important sense:  we recently saw a British MP scolding the EU for daring to force democratic nations to replace their elected leadership with those chosen by the central bankers.  The Germans are driving this process; and there is a clash between Catholic and Protestant assumptions at work in the cultural division between the debtor and creditor states.  The narrative is deadly, but it is founded on several truths.

The season has turned, as seasons will; the leaves come, and then they go.  Some day we'll ask where Europe went, and we won't have any other answer than Ziroonderel's.

Philosophy for Everyone

Brazil has apparently hit upon a piece of wisdom.

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality.... 

"[I]f you want to build a just and democratic society, isn’t it useful to get as clear as possible on what you mean by justice and democracy and to examine if you have good reasons to pursue these?” I asked. “And aren’t your intuitions about knowledge, goodness and beauty worth investigating?” 

Well, perhaps. But first the students had more questions for me. Is it true that Canadian bacon is the best in the world? What do people abroad think about Brazil? How did I get into philosophy? And—still more personally—do I believe in God, a question I encountered almost every time. I tried to get out of it by mentioning Spinoza’s impersonal God. That didn’t mean much to the students and, truth be told, I don’t even believe in the God of Spinoza. “We knew it—all philosophers are atheists!” they would say. When I asked who was a Catholic, who was an evangelical, and who practiced the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé (Salvador alone has more than 2000 terreiros, Candomblé’s houses of worship), all students raised their hand at least once. 

I assured the students that until the nineteenth century hardly any philosopher was an atheist.  Plato’s Euthyphro—with its argument about the relationship between ethics and the will of the gods—gets us into a lively discussion. 

I asked them, “Do moral norms depend on God’s will? Would it be fine to murder an innocent child if God says so?” The students found the idea outrageous. 

“But doesn’t God order Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” I asked. There was a moment of confusion. 

“But Abraham also holds God responsible when he wants to destroy Sodom and Gomorra,” one student replied. That can be interpreted as an independent norm of justice, I admitted.

He goes on to ask whether God can be held to account to an "objective" standard of justice; but the kind of God who is posterior rather than prior to justice is a different kind of God than most believe in.  It's a holdover from the earlier period, when the God of Abraham was one of very many Gods, and not yet the God who is responsible for existence.  Justice is posterior to existence -- that is, its structure of 'what is just?' arises from the nature of that which exists.  If nothing existed, nothing would be just or unjust; and if the world was substantially different, our ideas about justice might be as well.

Since God is the source of existence in Christian, Jewish and Islamic metaphysics, God would have to be prior to justice.  He may very well choose to submit to the standard, but it is not an "objective" standard -- it is God's own standard.

Still, there are other metaphysics, and the important thing is that these kids are wrestling with the big questions.  The article goes on to cite some professional philosophers who mock the effort to teach kids who can barely read and write to think about these things; but that is foolish in the extreme.  Reading and writing are technical skills, and one learns a technique in order to achieve some higher end.  Thus, if you cannot show them a higher end to justify the effort, they will not bother to master the technique.  If you inspire them to pursue a higher end, they'll find their way to mastery of whatever technology they need.

How The FBI Got Hacked

Apparently the window of vulnerability that allowed a secret FBI phone call to be recorded was the hacking of a personal, private email account.  Login information for the call, emailed to the agent's account, thus came into the hands of the hacking community.

Over the last few years, I've talked with a few experts in the field of digital communication security.  The password issue issue is a problem they often talk about; what they usually are aiming towards instead is a way of identifying the particular computer or phone that is in operation.  Then, even if you had the password, you couldn't call in without the right phone as well:  the other phones wouldn't accept your connection.

There's a lot going on in the field, and I think we'll see some pretty major advances over the next year or so.  I doubt it will end the hacking, though:  it will make it much harder, but a lot of hackers are motivated chiefly by the challenge.  Others, of course, like knowing secrets, and still others like to pull pranks on authority figures.  I've met a few good ones, though, whose real interest was just in doing something that was supposed to be impossible.

One fellow I knew got a job with a major corporation as the head of computer security for their nuclear facilities by hacking into their database and scheduling a job interview for himself.  They were very confused when he showed up for it, apologizing that they didn't seem to have any of the usual paperwork on hand, and weren't sure why an interview had been scheduled without the usual process of review.  After he explained how the interview had gotten scheduled, they hired him.

The story reminds me of that of philosopher and logician Saul Kripke, who was hired as a professor of philosophy without any degree in philosophy at all.

While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first." 

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own." 

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. 

 Princeton hired him as a professor, even though their usual standards required a doctorate as a minimum prerequisite.  It was a good decision.

Approval

Rough stuff in politics today.  Sometimes you bring it on yourself:

[Mark Steyn said] "For a start, when he says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That’s what he was living on at the time of the 2008 election. So all the president has to do in terms of shared responsibility is put a $10 bill in an envelope and mail it to Nairobi or Mombasa or wherever and he will double his brother’s salary.”

Sometimes you gripe about being taken out of context, only to discover that your remarks are just as bad in context:

“We now know from Gov. Romney, he joins President Obama. Obama is big food stamp, he’s little food stamp – but they both think food stamps are OK,” Gingrich said. “I don’t think food stamps are a future for America. They’re a necessary bridge back to getting a job and back to being independent of the government.”

Sadly, when you say that you aren't concerned about the poor because of the safety net, you're open to that line.

Of course, sometimes the context that makes you look bad is provided by someone else:



Great ad, except for the last few seconds.  It's a compelling argument against Mr. Romney; but it offers no reason to vote for Mr. Gingrich.

Well, Of Course They Would:

Business Insider wades into a controversy by noticing that the Susan G. Komen Foundation, though no longer willing to associate with Planned Parenthood, is willing to partner with a handgun manufacturer.

This gun is a beauty.  

And a portion of the sale of each P-22 Hope Edition will be donated to the Seattle Branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

So, why would they do this?  Two reasons:

1)  The pistol is a fundraiser for them.  Planned Parenthood was an expense.  An entirely different set of criteria are involved in opting into a program that makes money for your charity, versus opting out of an expense.

2)  It's target pistol -- .22 LR, with interchangable barrels so that it can simulate a real self-defense weapon, or be set up for formal match-style target shooting.  The only people who would find a pink .22 LR pistol threatening are squirrels.  (Squirrels are people too, right, PETA?)

UPDATE:  Looks to be moot now; the SGK Foundation has caved to the pressure brought by the abortion lobby.

Madness

There’s an educational video from that time, called “Understanding Asperger’s,” in which I appear. I am the affected 20-year-old in the wannabe-hipster vintage polo shirt talking about how keen his understanding of literature is and how misunderstood he was in fifth grade. The film was a research project directed by my mother, a psychology professor and Asperger specialist, and another expert in her department. It presents me as a young man living a full, meaningful life, despite his mental abnormality. 

“Understanding Asperger’s” was no act of fraud. Both my mother and her colleague believed I met the diagnostic criteria laid out in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.

No act of fraud?  To say that it was an honest application of the rules of psychology is no defense from that charge.  You would better say that your mother was as taken by the fraud as everyone else.  Say that she was even more a victim than were you, for she gave her life to it.

Flowers in February

The winds in Georgia are coming off the Gulf of Mexico this winter, so that the air is warm.  It's good weather for the road.

We took the bike up to northeast Georgia and western North Carolina.  The mountains are still bare, so that the rocks and waterfalls are easily seen from a great distance.  Nevertheless there is proof of life in the warm winter.

The Methodist Church in Clayton, Georgia.  Clayton is an increasingly fun town, with an outstanding hardware store (featuring archery, guns, camping gear, and the lot), and several good restaurants and bars.  One of the bars is built out of a refinished service station, called "The Universal Joint."  Camp at Black Rock Mountain, a thousand feet above, and you'll hear them rocking down below.

So much for the city.  Beyond, in the Wild, flowers grow.

Georgia Veronica Blue, one of our native glories.

Nandina berries, which are not native but invasive.  "All parts of the plant are poisonous."  It's also known as 'sacred bamboo.'

Daffodils in wintertime.  These broke out on the last day of January this year.

Some Old Posts, Newly Relevant

I find to my surprise that I have a post on Rick Santorum from 2005.  It arises from an article quite critical of him.

Also, chiefly for Cassandra, an old post on Democratic purges and the danger they posed to the party.  I came down on what I take to be her side; but the year was 2006, and the Democrats did well in the next two elections.  Maybe 2010 was the point at which purging the ideologically impure began to harm them; but I doubt it, all things considered.

So, my analysis was wrong:  but why was it wrong?  Do the facts imply that purges were helpful in achieving the wave elections of 2006 and 2008?  Or are they just irrelevant, noise in the face of greater matters?  If so, what are the consequences of that?

Troll Valley Comes to Life

Lars Walker proves prescient.  My favorite scene in Troll Valley was this one, where the prohibitionist is haranguing dissenters in her family by reading pro-temperance newspaper clips at breakfast, and commanding approval of the sentiments.  One morning she read a letter to an editor:

"I would like to relate an incident that occurred on the approach of my youngest daughter's eighth birthday," the correspondent said.  "Upon my inquiring of the innocent what she desired as a gift for the impending celebration, she looked at me with grave, ingenuous blue eyes and said, 'Mother, what I would like most is to see the ratification of Prohibition.'  Think what sorrow was mine to be compelled to inform her that we must await the pleasure of our legislators before this blessing can be ours!  It is apparent to the most obtuse that even the babes in arms are alive to the necessity of the reform of our civilization.  How much longer must they live in fear of the drunkard and his madness?  For our children's sake, we must drive Rum from our shores." 

Mother sighed. "Have you ever heard a more touching story?" she asked. 

Bestefar shook his head.  "I think any child who says she wants Prohibition for her birthday will probably steal as well as lie." 

Mother's cheeks flamed.  "What a wicked thing to say!"

Bestefar was right, of course.  However, the trick doesn't only work on parents longing for the reform of our civilization; it can work on parents of the defenders, too.

Quit Unsettling That Science!

The House Committee on Un-American Activities, that is, the "Forecast the Facts" website, is on a mission to purge the TV weatherman community of dirty denialists and present the viewing public with pure and approved scientific views on Global Climate Whatever. I was surprised to learn that a solid majority of TV weathermen privately harbor heretical skepticism about the role of humankind and/or CO2 in harming Gaia. Almost a quarter of them now are prepared to come right out and call AGW a "scam" in off-the-air polls. This must be stopped! As the creepy blog ThinkProgress puts it:

These climate denier meteorologists are betraying the public’s trust and distorting America’s airwaves with ideological science denial.

The chief meterologist for a Houston TV station explains that more humility is in order:

Operational meteorologists and forecasters are not climatologists. The background education is somewhat similar, but our area of expertise is different. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop some TV weather forecasters from spouting off on the subject.

But hey, if you believe in AGW, go ahead and spout off. You owe it to your viewers to get the truth out! Activists point out that "when a region is in the midst of a drought or heat wave, it is important to discuss the role climate change plays in amplifying such an event." When a region in in the midst of wet or cold weather, though, apparently it is important to stress that climate is not the same as weather, or to explain that anthropogenic CO2 levels can lead to climate disruption of every conceivable variety, by an undiscovered mechanism that nevertheless is completely settled.

Well, our confidence in the information we get from the TV weatherman could hardly be affected one way or another by the amount of nonsense they spout about the "science" of long-term climate trend analysis. Just the website title "Forecast the Facts" should alert the reader of the odd confusion in the mainstream climate community over the difference between facts and predictive models. Last Friday's document dump included a painful admission from the UK's national weather service, dubbed the "Met Office," that the latest warming trend stopped cold in 1997, apparently as a result of changes in sunspot activity. The Met Office didn't sit still for this politically incorrect interpretation of the stubborn facts, though. It explained that right-thinking scientists understand that a predicted severe drop in the Sun's activity, perhaps rivaling the "Maunder minimum" of 300 years ago, might indeed cause the Thames to freeze over again, but for some reason would likely prove to be a strictly local effect, leaving the rest of the globe to endure continued warming. Remember, don't try to do this scientific thinking at home. Leave it to the experts.