Just One Little Problem...

You've heard of the Black-Scholes equation?

Black-Scholes underpinned massive economic growth. By 2007, the international financial system was trading derivatives valued at one quadrillion dollars per year. This is 10 times the total worth, adjusted for inflation, of all products made by the world's manufacturing industries over the last century. The downside was the invention of ever-more complex financial instruments whose value and risk were increasingly opaque. So companies hired mathematically talented analysts to develop similar formulas, telling them how much those new instruments were worth and how risky they were. Then, disastrously, they forgot to ask how reliable the answers would be if market conditions changed. 

Black and Scholes invented their equation in 1973; Robert Merton supplied extra justification soon after. It applies to the simplest and oldest derivatives: options. There are two main kinds. A put option gives its buyer the right to sell a commodity at a specified time for an agreed price. A call option is similar, but it confers the right to buy instead of sell. The equation provides a systematic way to calculate the value of an option before it matures. Then the option can be sold at any time. The equation was so effective that it won Merton and Scholes the 1997 Nobel prize in economics. (Black had died by then, so he was ineligible.)
...
The Black-Scholes equation relates the recommended price of the option to four other quantities. Three can be measured directly: time, the price of the asset upon which the option is secured and the risk-free interest rate. This is the theoretical interest that could be earned by an investment with zero risk, such as government bonds. The fourth quantity is the volatility of the asset. This is a measure of how erratically its market value changes. The equation assumes that the asset's volatility remains the same for the lifetime of the option, which need not be correct. 

It's a genius act of advanced mathematics, which gives us predictability in an area of uncertainty and allows us to trade options at the level of ten times the total value of a century's production.  There turns out to be just one little problem with it.

Despite its supposed expertise, the financial sector performs no better than random guesswork.

Oops.  Guess that's why all those folks who used to have good jobs in construction are now raising their kids on the EITC.  It wasn't because they didn't realize how dumb they were; it's because somebody else thought he was too smart.

This seems like a problem for our model too, though.  We just finished a long talk about how markets make better decisions -- at least, when immediate information is available locally.  Now, the financial sector is nothing if not a market.  Isn't that right?

Rewired It

So, a minor issue:  the clothes dryer burned out a while ago.  Since I pretty much never buy anything new, I found a used one I could buy off a guy who didn't need it any more because he'd bought a better one.  When I got it home, I found it had a four-prong plug instead of the older-style three-prong plug.  No problem:  the junker has the right kind of plug.  I stripped it off the old one, wired it up to the new one, and plugged it in.

The dryer ran really loud, really hot, and quit after ten seconds.

Now at first I thought I had just been sold a lemon by a guy who had 'bought a better dryer' because the old one didn't work.  After all, I'd wired it up correctly according to the diagram:  white ground wire on the center, two hot wires on the sides.

After a little internet research, however, I found out that this is a common problem if the dryer is wired wrongly, i.e., if you get the ground on the wrong attachment.  So I went down into the basement and snooped around, and found out that the previous owner of the house apparently did the dryer wiring themselves as an aftermarket.  It's a rather amazing job -- not up to code, and somewhat more resembling a spider web than a professional installation.  Still, it worked for two years, so I figured it probably still worked -- it just wasn't wired right according to code.

Once I sorted that out, I found the true ground and swapped the wires around, and the dryer works perfectly now.  I kind of wish the previous owner of the house had mentioned his little adventures in electricity, though; but I suppose he would have believed that it would have lowered my offering price for the house.  (He would have been right, too.)

Recruiting

Apparently Alabama is mellowing with age.

Four-star junior tailback Alvin Kamara of Norcross, Ga., couldn't believe what he found in his mailbox after getting home from school one recent day.  Or rather, what he found falling out of his mailbox.

"There were 105 letters from Alabama," Kamara told Rivals.com.

Sending a kid lots of letters is a really nice way to ask him to join your football team, especially given how much work it is for someone from Alabama to write a letter.

Still, it sounds pretty weak compared to the old Bear Bryant play.

"If I wanted a kid bad enough," Bear Bryant of Alabama once said, "I used every trick I could think of.... [W]hen I was at Kentucky I dressed our manager, Jim Murphy, in a priest's outfit to recruit Gene Donaldson away from Notre Dame.  Maybe Jim Murphy did tell Donaldson he was a priest.  Shucks, I'd have told him Murphy was Pope....

Well, the old days are gone forever.

The Story of the "U" in UK

This article from History Today begins in a gratifying way:

Anybody who enters into even a casual discussion with a US citizen about their country’s constitution will be struck by the ease with which they reference names, dates and significant events in the creation – and subsequent amendment – of that 225-year-old document.

How nice that this is the perception!  Most of us would prefer only to deepen American appreciation for the Constitution and its history.

The author goes on to note that his own countrymen are not as excited about the constitutional process that underlies their present union.  There are some reasons for this, including the fact that one of the most significant acts of union was the 1801 acts that brought Ireland into union with existing Great Britain.  Technically two different acts -- one in each parliament -- it turns out that no one was much interested in celebrating the bicentennial in 2001.

Ben Johnson and the Cavalier Poets

The Times (of London) has an article on Ben Johnson, "one of our greatest poets – I know not how good a one[.]"

In his turbulent career Jonson had many scrapes with the law, including prosecution for manslaughter, having killed the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel in Hoxton Fields. Jonson escaped the gallows thanks to the old law excusing those who could read the so-called “neck-verse” from Psalm 51 as a test of literacy. In several plays, Jonson echoes his own experience with allusions to characters being “saved by the book”.

The Cavalier Poets were a really interesting group, sadly not as well known these days.   They favored a life of courage and boldness, humane and even bawdy:  one of my favorite of their poems is built around a dream in which the poet imagined himself as a vine twining about his lady love, but found when he awoke that he was "more like a stock than like a vine."  The allusion to the thick root stock, contrasted with the qualities of the vines that grow from it, would have been obvious enough in a more agricultural age.

One of the reasons I like the Cavalier Poets so well is that they often force us to rethink whose 'side' we are on in reading history.  It is very common for Americans to take the side of revolution against the kings to be the side of progress, and to see in Oliver Cromwell a kind of predecessor.  For part of the country, that's even somewhat true -- the Roundheads were the ancestors of the Puritans of Boston.  Yet the attitudes of modern Boston have nothing to do with the Puritan ones, and will find very much more to recognize in the rowdy, bawdy Cavaliers.

There is an ironic reversal here in the South, for whom the Cavaliers make up many of our proper ancestors.  In Theodore Roosevelt's day it was a commonplace of historians to divide the nation into the Roundhead Yankees and the Cavalier Southerners; Roosevelt does it himself in The Winning of the West.  Yet of course, today the South is the Bible Belt, and far more likely to exhibit something like Puritanism than anywhere settled by the Puritans.  On the other hand, the South is also the home of Outlaw Country Music -- and David Allen Coe would find much to recognize in Ben Johnson, as might Willie Nelson, or Johnny Cash, or Johnny Paycheck.

In any case, it turns out that Ben Johnson was buried in Westminster Abbey -- head first.

(H/t:  Arts & Letters Daily)

Speaking of the Difference in Winters...

...a discussion of the long winter of Europe, versus our own potential contention.

Snow in Rome, Pipes in Florida

It's been such a warm winter here that, even with this week's short cold spell, I've kind of assumed that the winter was warm everywhere.  My sister sends pictures of the snowfall in the Tetons, so I know it's not warm everywhere; but I suppose I figured it was probably 'warm for the Tetons in winter.'

Apparently this is an unusually snowy winter in Italy, however!



(Hat tip to Medieval News, though I gather the snow is current.)

Meanwhile, down at the Caloosahatchee Celtic Festival, two weeks ago in Flordia, they were singing about the Holy Land... sleeveless.  Shirtless, even.



UPDATE:

Drift back to the fall, and you can hear that piper at something closer to his best... along with a banjo player. I'm not actually in this video, but I easily could have been:  I was right there all day, just not at this very moment.  Several friends of mine pass in and out on the left hand side at times, though you won't be able to tell anything about them, being in the distance as they are.  Still, a pleasant memory.

Something Important about Rick Santorum

MEGADETH endorses him!



No, not that.

Actually, the news story that I found most striking today was this description of his economic plan.  Now, his plan is interesting to me because it does several things that are outside the usual playbooks for either party:

[In addition to cutting spending by $5T in five years he wants to flatten the tax code...]  

His plan would also likely mean a cut for many of the tens of millions of households making between $17,400 and around $50,000. They'd presumably fall into the 10 percent bracket, down from the 15 percent rate they currently pay. In keeping with his traditional views on social issues, Santorum also wants to encourage family formation (he and his wife have six children themselves), by tripling the personal deduction for each child, and by scrapping marriage tax penalties. 

Unlike Mitt Romney, Santorum has said he opposes a rise in the minimum wage, although he wouldn't scrap the concept altogether, as some in his party would. As well as auditing the Fed, he'd have it focus only on controlling inflation, and not on promoting employment. Santorum supports Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to save money by transforming Medicare into a system of private insurance. And like every 2012 Republican presidential candidate current or former, he'd repeal President Obama's health-care law. 

So far, that's a plan that sticks pretty closely to the standard GOP script. But other aspects of Santorum's proposal set him apart from his party, by grappling with issues of concern to Americans further down the economic spectrum. 

Again like most of his GOP rivals, Santorum would lower the corporate tax rate. But he'd establish two new rates: 17.5 percent -- a 50 percent cut from the current 35 percent rate -- for most businesses, and zero for manufacturers. The goal, his website says, is to "multiply job opportunities for struggling middle-income families and renew communities that have lost critical manufacturing jobs." 

In campaign appearances and debate performances, Santorum has often appeared eager to reinforce that focus on restoring middle-class jobs -- implicitly bucking the standard Republican line that derides issues of economic inequality and mobility as class warfare. 

"We need to talk about income mobility," he implored his party at a Republican debate on economic issues in November, noting the sky-high jobless rate for Americans without college degrees. "We need to talk about people at the bottom of the income scale being able to get necessary skills and rise so they can support themselves and a family."  

By the same token, Santorum hasn't shied away from mentioning poverty. "I don't believe that poverty is a permanent condition," he declares in the plan. "How do we effectively address poverty in rural and urban America? We promote jobs, marriage, quality education and access to capital and embrace the supports of civil society."

Now, since we're in the middle of a bruising primary battle, let's assume that whomever the final nominee happens to be will adopt the best ideas out of all the competing plans to take forward to the general election. What are the best ideas here? What might need to go?  What do other candidates have that you'd like to see added to the final plan?  For example, do you like minimum wage increases, or do you prefer to avoid them, or would you like to see the minimum wage discarded entirely?

Do you like the concept of fighting poverty by promoting marriage -- we've often seen good evidence that getting and staying married is among the most crucial factors in staying out of poverty.  Will increasing the incentives for marriage cut poverty?

What about the tax benefit for kids?  It appears he is proposing a deduction increase that can only answer to your actual liability, rather than an increase in the Child Tax Credit that (like the EITC) it can bring a "refund" even though you didn't pay the taxes in actual dollars.  At the lower end this might move some families off welfare; although some on the right regard the EITC-type plan as a form of welfare, since it results in transfer payments to poorer families.

I don't think I agree, though, because families raising children is what produces the best and most successful citizens, who will go on to pay taxes in the future.  It is therefore a kind of public good, in that all of us reap the benefits whether or not we pay into it (at least, all of us who live long enough to go on Medicare, or drive on the highways).  It's something we might reasonably support, not out of charity, but because it's the right thing to do, and because -- like making sure children are educated -- it works to the benefit of all of us.

Anyway, it's an interesting set of proposals.  What ideas did other candidates have you'd like to see added? Which of these ideas do you not like, and why?

The Status of the Infinite

A friend of mine who is a professor, and a specialist in the philosophy underpinning mathematics, told me that the major debate in that philosophy is over the status of the infinite.  You can see why:

 [T]he more that physicists stopped worrying about what their complicated equations meant and simply ran the numbers, the more progress they made. Some of their predictions have now been confirmed by experiments to 10 decimal places or more— the most accurate predictions in history.  

Real objects cannot have infinite charge or mass or whatever. But when scientists in the 1950s started calculating those quantities with their latest and fanciest theories, infinities kept sprouting up and ruining things. Rather than abandon the theories, though, a few persistent scientists realized that they could do away with the infinities through mathematical prestidigitation. (Basically, they started calculating with and canceling out infinity like a regular old number, normally a big no-no.) 

No one liked this fudging, but because it led to such stunningly accurate answers, scientists couldn’t dismiss it. In fact, the reigning paradigm in physics today—which describes the workings of invisible “fields” (similar to magnetic fields)— would not exist without this hand waving. And now physics is stuck with fields: they’ve become more fundamental to understanding the universe than mass or charge. Fields have become the very fabric of reality—even if our understanding of them relies on some unrealistic assumptions.

So what's the problem with infinity?  Let me offer a couple of starting points at getting at an answer to that question -- both of them discovered not in modern philosophy, but in Ancient Greek.

The first one is the problem the article cites -- theoretically, actual infinities shouldn't exist.  Aristotle explained why potential infinities could exist, and you probably know at least one of the arguments:  if you have a number, you can always divide it in half.  Thus one can be divided into 1/2, then 1/4, and so on forever.  The other kind he recognized was like this:  if you have an actual universe with the size of two, you can divide it into half, and then take the second half and divide it in half, so that now you have divide out one and a half from the total; and then again, so that you have divided out one and three quarter from the total; but you will never reach two.  Two is thus a kind of infinity, since you can never get to it; but it is not an actual infinity.  (As the Stanford article points out, however, this is not consistent with Aristotle's idea that the universe was eternal -- and that there must have been, therefore, an infinite number of days.)

These are not actual infinities, because you have really only the thing you are dividing and it is of determinate magnitude.  If the universe is not infinite, you should not be able to get to infinitely large magnitudes.  It is only through infinite division that there should be even a potential infinite.

(The concept we learned in grade school -- that given any number, you can always add one more -- is another kind of potential infinity.  It deals only with imaginary objects, not "real objects," which we would like to believe are finite).

The other starting point for the problem are Zeno's paradoxes.  Zeno's paradoxes of motion show that, if things are infinitely divisible, motion should be impossible.  Since a distance is a length, and a length is the kind of thing that should be infinitely divisible (one mile into half a mile, etc.), it should be the case that motion is not possible.  For say that you divide the line into an infinite number of points.  For motion to be possible, you'd have to pass from one point to the next.  But there is no "next" point if there is a true infinity, because you can always divide the distance between them in half.  Thus, between any two points are an infinite number of points.  (For further discussion, see the second paradox of motion.)

Likewise time should be divisible (a minute into half a minute, etc).  This provides its own problem, since we think motion takes place in time (indeed, Aristotle thought that time was the counting of motion).  So if we divide time down to the smallest possible increment, either a flying arrow is frozen in time and space, or it moves.  If it moves, though, our instant of time must have a start and a finish -- which means it should be further divisible, contrary to our assumption that this was the smallest possible division.  Therefore, we should get to a division in which motion isn't possible; but if time is composed of moments in which no motion is possible, how could motion be possible at all?  

The rest of Zeno's paradoxes, and the thinking of Parmenides and several others, posed real challenges for any system that includes infinities, but also for any system that includes multiple things.  The upshot of both is that reality only makes sense if it isn't really divisible, but finally unified.  Aristotle argues against this in Physics I, in part from the obvious rejoinder:  well, but we see motion all the time.  Thus, motion and time must be real; we all agree on it.

For many years we've followed Aristotle's basic solution by assuming that real (i.e., actual) infinities didn't exist.  Now, however, we find that we are able to make scientific predictions that are far more accurate than anything in human history... but only by assuming the infinite with real objects.

That's a problem.  It's a problem because it means that the most accurate science in the world is founded on assumptions that we have some good reason to think are impossible.

What does it mean if they're not?

A Cup of Mead To Warm the Heart on St. Valentine's Day

Allow me to offer a toast.  Let us drink to the best and noblest of women.  Naturally, I mean my own.  (But if you direct that toast towards another in your heart, you may trust that I will not pry.)

To the ladies who join us here in the Hall, let me thank you for your friendship and kindness.  I will not toast you, but only because you may not drink a toast to yourself -- and I would want to share the wine with you fairly.  Wæs Hæl!

The Return of Elise

Those of you who have been anxiously awaiting Elise's return from exile will find that she is up and running again.  She has a simple solution to the current debate about contraception:  Catholics should stop providing charity.

There is a sense in which that solves the problem, but it doesn't, really.  The problem isn't even employer-sponsored health insurance, although that is part of the problem.  Moving it to the government doesn't relieve anyone who pays taxes of material support for abortion.  That's why there are always debates about taxpayer support for abortions.

What really would work is for everyone who takes the provision of contraception and abortion to be a sacred duty to provide them on a charitable basis.  Just as the Catholics are providing hospital care to the poor, you too can give your money and time away.  If it is really that important to you, there are plenty of people out there right now who would be only too happy to accept your donation.

Then everyone who wants to obtain these things can obtain them; and everyone who wants to support them can support them; and no one is forced to violate his or her conscience over it.

The first step is to accept that some people really do believe that abortion is a moral horror, and that it isn't right to make them participate in it.

If you can't accept that, well, Elise has another good point  that might convince you instead.

"She loves another. She thinks it is you."

When better than Valentine's Day to discuss adultery? Belladonna Rogers at PJ Media ran a column last week about whether an adulterer should make a clean breast of things to his/her spouse. Honestly, I don't know. I'm inclined to think, as I commented there, that you can camouflage part of yourself, but you can't replace it with something real. So your spouse will detect the blank, dead spot without necessarily knowing what's wrong. I suspect the dead spot is more dangerous than the adultery.

In today's follow-up column, Ms. Rogers holds to her original advice that confession is merely self-indulgent and cruel to the wronged spouse. Checking again on last week's comments, I found this very thoughtful one:

[To] carry off an affair, [the adulterer who started this discussing by asking Rogers for advice] had to feel entitled to this misbehavior. To what does he feel entitled? Not all entitlements are bad. He might feel entitled to be swept away by a grand passion. He might feel entitled to lots of worshipful attention. He might feel entitled to more sex. He might feel entitled to stress relief. Who knows? It’s worth asking, framed that way -- to what does this man feel entitled, enough to violate the terms of one of the very few vows he’s made in his life. Seriously -- we watch vows from Crusaders, and comic book avengers, and nuns and scarlett o’hara’s calorie count . . . but we only make one or two in our life. What sort of entitlement makes it easy to disregard that vow?

Sinner is also in thrall to some particular bad ideas in circulation. Love conquers all, love excuses all, I couldn’t help myself, affairs are sexy, while married love is boring . . . who knows? It’s all on sale in hollywood, so there’s a chance the guy is just a sucker for pop-culture. He might want to consider what influences he succumbed to. Did he go looking? “Dear penthouse letters. . . . I never thought it could happen to me . . . .” I think it’s kind of funny, b/c what I get out of it is nearly an animist belief that the whole world is one pulsing orgasmic reality slightly covered with clothes and manners. If he keeps the attitudes, without examining them -- he might think he’s enslaved to the boring woman and has heroically given up wildly satisfying sex, sacrificed any possibility of his own happiness . . . it’s worth checking, to see what he thought about all of this . . . .

. . . The pain is realizing that [your wronged wife is] in love with a different man -- the good man you might have been. You are experiencing, possibly, a form of jealousy: she loves another. She thinks it is you. That’s a poetic form of justice, don’t you think?

Why not fit his face onto yours, and pretend to be him? A good, honorable, decent, loyal, faithful man. At some point, the mask might become true, and your smaller, meaner, more selfish self will have crawled into a corner, to not be appreciated, or see the light of day in all his meagre dragony glory. To be unknown, as you sought to reveal yourself, you must admit, is a sort of punishment. To not be accepted just as you are, as incontinent, weak, helpless . . . it’s every infant’s nightmare. you’ve just dressed it up in grownup clothes.

Your wife loves another man. You could have been him, but you aren’t. That’s the burden you are trying to cast off -- you’re jealous of him, the one she knows and loves . . . .

Don’t confess, and kill the other, honorable man. Behave as if he were you. You are his doppelganger. Do him proud, Joseph Conrad tough-man proud. You’ll have the chance to grow to be honorable.

“Guinevere”

Wond’rous bird, she dwelt in a land

With such glory as beauty assured.

Her wild song rang a golden strand;

Her throat band bright as swords;

To her grey tail did eyes return,

To a breast as rich as summer corn.

Two great birds fought for her love;

Chatter’d and clash’d like summer gale,

Till whole of flock they fought above;

Claw and feather like knives in mail:

So one beak found the road severe,

So one great heart did know its spear.

Heart-sent blood shone on the snow,

Horror sent the winged beauty away.

She sought a perch where she in woe

Suffered through her heart’s decay;

And in molt her feathers fell,

And in grief she long would dwell.

Brave victor, he had lost his love

And sought a quiet place alone,

Bearing wounds he died thereof;

And she who far from him had flown

Whiten'd in molt till feathers new

Were pure and shining as the dew.

Far and high men saw her glow

Alit on tree at mountain peak,

Feathers colored as grey old snow,

Ashen from tail to start of beak;

Beauteous sorrow became her fame,

But from that hour, she never sang.

It'll Soon Be Valentine's Day...

...so here's to beauty and horsepower, two of the great loves of my life.









UPDATE:  These two are not of the same type, but I think they are worthy additions.  The first captures the beauty of horsepower (hat tip: BSBFB).  The second, some rising beauties of courage and skill.

A Test for an Old Proverb

'A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.'

Guess we'll find out!

A new friend

We've adopted a 10-month-old black lab from the son of some friends. Like a lot of kids of college age, he didn't understand how hard it would be to raise and train a young dog while attending classes and moving from one student apartment to another, letting her be babysat here and there by a whole series of friends and relatives.

I'm sure he must have taught her something, but it's not apparent what. She didn't understand about water at all. Now she's learning what to do in the little bits of pond we have left after our long drought, though she stills swims like a puppy, all frantic splashing. The notion of retrieving is just bubbling up from her genes into her consciousness like a revelation. She heels about as well as a raccoon. I know she'll settle down quickly, though, once she gets used to her new, more consistent home. There are lots of woods to run around in and exercise that bursting youth and strength. She needs to smell everything and learn that it's hers. She needs to know that we're her pack now.

Our two other dogs are adjusting, one easily and one with difficulty (pretty much blowing things out of both ends all over the carpet; use your imagination; let it run wild). Even the one with the delicate sensibility will come around soon, though, if past dog additions are any indication. Luckily I don't object much to dog messes.

This is the first time I can remember that we took in a dog more on my husband's initiative than on my own. I was prepared to let our friends find a home for this pretty dog somewhere else. I'm always up for another dog, though, and so was thrilled when my husband suggested it. (What could be better than a husband who adopts dogs?) It just means going back on puppy discipline: no leaving out balls of yarn or books until we can explain to her how she must act.

Speaking of animals, I got to cuddle a small boa constrictor this weekend.

More Sweet for Hate and Heart's Desire

Dad29 sends some words from Dr. Russell Kirk:

We are not called to material success. We are called to obedience. We are called to love. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful will find their true place in our culture only when many more of us are obedient to Love.

"What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. 

He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

Well, now.  What ought a man to hate?

Not his enemy, to be sure!  Jesus said "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you[.]  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?"

Chesterton put it into verse, a verse that all of you know well:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

If it is not the enemy, it is his evil; and you must hate the evil while loving the man.  This is fitting, for he ought to hate your evil -- and all of us have evil within us -- while loving you.

Follow the first link on the sidebar under "Chivalry," and you will find this:

 If I am to love a man, I must love him as he is; yet if I am to love him as I love myself, then I may fight with him to the degree that I would fight myself. I may even kill him, if there are things I would rather kill myself than be guilty of having done.  

If I can but forgive his soul, I am doing all that is asked in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." If I can do that, then we may fight each other as hard as needs be -- and we may even love the chance to strike a blow for what is right, best, just. Even the most wicked man is therefore lovable, insofar as he gives us the greatest opportunity to create good in the world. Even our own capacity for sin is lovable, for the same reason. 

We are meant to hate the evil, but love the man. We often find evil in ourselves, which we should hate; and we should seek mercy for it. Yet we might also remember the good that comes of it. Another man, evil in his way, fights against us in his own glorious cause. For a moment, while he is fighting the evil in us, that wicked man is bright.

So, there are two lessons of substance here.  The first is this:  One of the things we might forgive God for is the idea of original sin.  For if it were not for the evil in us, others would not have the chance to strive brightly against a terrible foe.

The second is the answer to a question Cassandra once asked:  'Why can't we just do the right thing, because it is the right thing?'  The answer is that, if we did -- if we did just that -- no one would have the chance to brighten their spirit.

The evil in us bends to the good of others, and so even it is worth loving, in its way.  

The Old Wound

A new paper asks, 'Who gave Arthur a Crippling Blow?' and answers that it was Saint George:

[W]ith the Norman Conquest, a new form of kingship was imposed on the English people. William I, for example, made far-reaching changes to solidify his regime-change, but at the same time showed less interest in England than in his own native Normandy. Lesyer says that for William, “England was a source of revenue, no more, no less.” 

Although subsequent monarchs were somewhat better on establishing positive relations with their English subjects, the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 quickly led to the growth of his saintly cult and restarted pro-English views that had largely laid underground for the previous decades. Leyser makes a point of noting that it is “hard to find any English king who inspired affection,” and while countries like France produced hagiographies for some of their rulers, this did not exist in England. 

Leyser argues that it was also during this period that as the story of King Arthur became popularized by writers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, he began to be seen as the ideal king, who would return and right all the wrongs imposed on the English people – and that these wrongs often were committed by the present-day kings. For Leyser, nationalist sentiment emerged in opposition to the crown, with King Arthur one of the main representatives of these views.With this in mind, it is not surprising that many English monarchs were lukewarm to depicting themselves as a new Arthur, and it was during the reign of Edward III that another English hero was given more prominence – St.George, a soldier from late antiquity who became the focus of several hagiographic legends. King Edward did much boost the figure of St.George, as well as that of the Virgin Mary. He tied the fortunes of the Plantagenet family to these two saints, and used their cults to promote his own rule.Leyser concludes by noting that by the late Middle Ages it was St.George who became the leading symbol of the English nation, giving “a crippling blow on Arthur, from which he never recovered.”

One small problem with that thesis:  Edward III died in 1377.  Guess who was born about 1405?

Where Could Such An Obligation Arise?

The WSJ has an article today that Hot Air tagged "There is No Such Thing as Free Birth Control."  The article makes the point that someone has to pay for the birth control or abortifacients that come with insurance plans, and since the insurers are going to be tasked to provide it at no cost to the end user, that means that the cost will be hidden and distributed into the costs of the plan.  It has to be that way, because the stuff costs money:  someone has to pay for it.

The point of the article is that this continues to violate the religious freedom of Catholics, who are commanded by their faith not to materially support abortion, contraception, etc.  That's true, of course, but it's not what interests me.

Rather, the Hot Air tag to the article suddenly made me realize how odd it is to expect to receive something expensive for free.  It's not usually the case that you obtain expensive things for free.

The argument seems to be that it's important for women, so therefore it should be free to women.  There are lots of things that are at least as important, though, that we certainly don't expect to be free:  food, for example, or sufficient clothing for the winter.  The argument seems to be that birth control ought to be free (and indeed it is, in the form of abstinence, a form of birth control that Catholics consider it a virtue to materially assist:  but I digress).  It ought to be free, and any employer ought to be sure that any of their employees receives it as free.

This is really an astonishing demand.  I could understand demanding it at cost:  we could structure an argument whereby insurance companies are understood to receive a reasonable profit, and as part of the price of approving the practice of the business in the state, we mandate that they arrange to provide certain critical medications to their consumers at cost.  We might ask, even then, why birth control or abortifacients would be the medicine we chose to occupy this position of special importance -- surely life-saving drugs would be a more worthy choice?  Still, at least at cost could conceivably be a reasonable demand.

Free, though?  Nothing is free.  Everyone knows this.

There is a parallel with last week's Komen feud, in which it was asserted that -- having once given Planned Parenthood money -- a kind of moral obligation existed to continue providing money for free.  Now we have an obligation, apparently on all of us who participate in employer-sponsored health plans, to provide pills for free.

How could any of us have come under an obligation to provide these things for free?  How could such an obligation arise?  "By law" is not an adequate answer, but it appears to be the only one.

UPDATE:  An answer of sorts comes in this piece from Think Progress:

Manmade global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the ”countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll.” Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

In addressing climate resilience, Robinson stressed the importance of focusing on health and burden impacts of climate change. One of the keys is access to reproductive health for women.

If all the assumptions made here were true, it would perhaps provide a ground from which an obligation of this sort could arise.  We could point to a common good -- the survival of the planet -- which might obligate all of us to contribute to it.  It might even be a good of a high enough order to explain why we would prefer the Pill to life-saving drugs.

Of course, all of these assumptions are controversial, so the ground is an unsteady one to say the least.  Nevertheless, this kind of argument grounds support for families:  we distribute the costs of public education to everyone, not just families with children, because we recognize that we all have a stake in ensuring that the next generation comes, and is educated and capable of undertaking the work of continuing the civilization.  Education is not free -- you must pay property taxes if you own property, and frequently also sales taxes, to support the local schools.  Still, it is offered below cost, which means that the cost is distributed.

The argument for public support of contraception and abortifacients is even stronger, since it demands that these things be free.  I would like to say that the two policies are different as well in that the one is in support of flourishing families and fecundity, while the other is in support of withering and barrenness; which is to say, that the difference is between life and death.  That may not be fair, though; if the supporter of free birth control believes that the planet shall otherwise die, they are in a fashion on the side of life.  They simply believe that life will not be possible but for a very few of us, on very much more parsimonious terms.

It's Eighteen Degrees Outside... What Should We Do?

Well, now, that depends on whether you are in Sweden...



...or New Jersey.



Actually, maybe there's not so much difference after all.

(H/t BSBFB).