A Pretty Good Run

Tallulah Gorge

The Tallulah River, from atop the Gorge

Beef, Bread, and Beer

Father's Day

From Sippican:

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.  Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass."  "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply.  "We're raising boys." 

- Harmon Killebrew

Against Our Cultural Bias Towards the Adults

A recent study on parents who have had same-sex relationships purports to show that their children have measurably worse outcomes than the children of married, stable biological parents.  The study has come in for a lot of wrath, as well as some legitimate criticisms of its methodology and conclusions.

One of the critics is E. J. Graff, a writer who is an advocate of same-sex marriage.  I've generally been impressed with her writing even though she and I are on opposite sides of this issue.  She is raising a point about the methodology and conclusions that I agree with -- that the study doesn't actually prove what the author claims it proves -- but in a way that makes my head spin.

Those aren’t the children of same-sex parents. Those are the children of different-sex parents, one of whom later has some sexual relationship with someone of the same sex, however brief or sustained. The gay dads he’s writing about? Those are men who finally get an adolscence, late in life, after they’ve lied to themselves or others to try to fit in socially because people like Mark Regnerus told them being gay is bad. In our world, those men should never have married women. A healthy society would let them come out young and, if they wanted children, have children with a male partner with whom they could happily remain. 

Emphasis in the original.

I have a serious problem with this way she has framed her point here.  All children are children of different-sex parents.  There is no such thing as a man having children with a male partner.  Whatever else a healthy society may do, a healthy society does not lie to itself about reality.

What happens when a male-male couple 'has children' is that the mother of the child is somehow excluded from the child's life.  She may be involved to some degree, or she may not, but the child doesn't have the day-to-day relationship with his or her mother that a child would have in a household with married biological parents.

It seems to me that the child has a very strong interest in having a loving relationship with both of its biological parents.  They are the two people in the world who are most like the child, after all:  so much of who we are is passed genetically that knowing your parents is an advantage in and of itself.  The better you understand them, and  how they deal with the difficulties they encounter in life, the better prepared you will be to engage in the difficulties life is most likely to throw you.  Even if you don't like your parents, you benefit from knowing them well.

Thus we can see a ranking, from the perspective of the child's interests:  the ideal thing for a child is to be born into a loving, stable heterosexual family in which the child can have a good relationship with both biological parents.  Every other option is less ideal, though we can disagree about whether a family with happy gay partners -- not "parents," though one of them might be -- is better or worse for the child than living in a marriage between unhappy biological parents.  That's the kind of thing that a study might usefully inform, if one is ever done; but it will be a while before it can be done well, since right now the data set is limited.  (I would think you would need to control for a lot of other things to get useful data, though:  income levels, for example, surely affect the outcomes for a family's children.)

Now having children isn't one of those things that you shouldn't do if you can't do it perfectly.  Perfection of the end is the proper way to aim, but it's still better to partially achieve the end than to entirely fail.  Many argue that it is better for children to spend time with their parents than in day care centers, for example, but even if that were conclusively proven it wouldn't mean that no family should have children if they can't avoid using day care.  That would be absurd:  clearly the child obtains a benefit from being born, and more benefits from every day of life.  To deny the child birth is to deny the child every good it will ever have.

That would be like telling a poor family that, since they can't eat steak, they shouldn't eat at all.  It's a ridiculous and absurd notion.  It's better for the child to be born, and have the chance for some happiness.  Besides, the odds aren't everything:  maybe the child will figure out a way to do better than the odds suggest.

For a long time, though, we've been talking about this issue as if the happiness of the parents was the paramount issue in how we think about questions of marriage and divorce.  Whatever else the study did, it at least put the focus back where it belongs.  Families are about kinship bonds across generations:  the children's interest is at least as important as the parents' interests, even if the child is powerless to defend its interests.  I would argue that the interests of the earlier set of parents is also relevant -- that there is a continuing set of mutual duties between all the involved generations -- but that seems to be an unpopular position these days.  If we can get people to at least change focus to favor the interests of the next generation over the current one, I'll take that as a good start.

A Swordsman on Swordfighting

I've had the chance to train with him.  For those of you who are interested, the man knows what he's talking about.

Gremlins

We're having a bit of technical, inter-tubes related difficulties here at the Hall.  Don't mind if you don't see me on any given day.

Mostly I'm just laying in wood for the winter anyway.  The odds of me having a great insight to trouble you with at this time are fairly small.  I can tell you that chainsaws, given modern fuel conditions, work better at 50:1 than 60:1; and that you need to change your gas out before it gets a month old, no matter how good your ratio happens to be.



Since we're doing old cartoons on relevant subjects, how about a Depression-era Disney cartoon on the subject of eviction?

The Nature of the Thing

We've spoken often of views marriage, and especially of Aquinas' concept that matrimony is based in natural law:  that is, it is based on human nature.  Our nature imposes upon us certain requirements -- if we wish to survive as a species, or as a culture, these requirements take the force of duties.

Of course, it's a duty that doesn't have to be done by everyone:  there are some who reject it for themselves, which is fine so long as they support it when it is done by others.  If it is a fact of human nature -- and surely it is -- we have to sort out a way to make this work.  It's a duty that falls on us all, either to bear ourselves, or to support.

But she is wrong to say that children are poor conversationalists.  That may be true for children whose parents didn't bother to talk to them like people.  If you did, though, you probably found that they were very interesting conversationalists.  A child who has been engaged enough to have learned to speak well and properly presents quite a challenge in conversation.  If you take them seriously, and engage them seriously, you'll have few conversations as interesting in your whole life.

Restoring Faith in Government

So we're all excited to learn that the Justice Department has appointed two investigators to look into the rampant leaks, sometimes derailing critical Top Secret programs, that have recently emerged in a series of articles highly favorable to the Obama administration.  However...

Well, look on the bright side.  Only one of them has heavily donated to both the Senate and Presidential campaigns of President Obama; while holding an office to which he was appointed by President Obama; in order to take a position for which he will doubtless be paid a fine honorarium by the Justice Department that serves President Obama.

The other guy is just in the pay of the administration.  Otherwise, he appears to be independent.  Since the Justice Department is theoretically autonomous to a certain degree -- if Eric Holder can be relied upon in this regard -- there should be nothing to worry about.

How not to chat on Facebook

From PJ Media:

Here’s a thought: If you’re a liberal who feels the urge to murder kittens when someone says something nice about Sarah Palin or a conservative who thinks Obama is a mixture of Stalin and Darth Vader and you just can’t shut up about it, maybe you shouldn’t be [Facebook] friends with someone who vehemently disagrees with you. If you are going to be someone’s friend, then you should keep in mind that friends politely disagree. They don’t regularly insult each other, trash other people in the thread, and go off on angry rants. So, just remember what your mother said, “If you can’t say something nice, then shut your ignorant mouth, you loser! I can’t believe I ever had a horrible child like you! You’ll never be a success! Never!” Ok, maybe I’m just assuming that’s how the mothers of people like that talk, but you have to admit that it would explain a lot.

Thoughts on Silence

Here is an interview with a Trappist monk on the virtue he finds in what is popularly called the vow of silence.

When a man and woman meet and fall in love they begin to talk. They talk and talk and talk all day long and can't wait to meet again to talk some more. They talk for hours together, and never tire of talking and so talk late into the night, until they become intimate—and then they don't talk anymore. Neither would describe intimacy as “the sacrifice of words” and a monk is not inclined to speak about his intimacy with God in this way.

A Study in Terrible Judgment

Anyone who happens to be a pedophile should consider any and all procedures that prevent them from acting on their disorder.  If you choose to disregard this advice, however, at least don't select a horse ranch in Texas as the best place to carry on.

A Texas father caught a man sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter and punched him in the head repeatedly, killing him, authorities said.

Well of course he did.

West Point Looks Back

Were you aware that the United States Military Academy's Department of History teaches students to fire 1500s matchlock muskets?  Conduct WWI-style trench warfare?

These are some interesting videos.  The old lessons become relevant again surprisingly regularly:  think of the SF guys in the early days of Afghanistan having not only to ride but to pack horses.  Rigging a pack horse is an entirely separate skill set, once well known to the American cavalry.

The lessons of trench warfare can become relevant again quickly, if only for an afternoon:  but if it does, remembering the old ways is the difference between surviving the afternoon and not.

An Older View of Marriage

I was just reading Ragnhild Johnrud Zorgati's Pluralism in the Middle Ages:  Hybrid Identities, Conversion, and Mixed Marriages in Medieval Iberia.  There's an interesting passage I wanted to quote to you as it pertains to our occasional discussion of the nature of marriage.  We're familiar with Aquinas' natural law view of matrimony, i.e., that view of marriage that takes its form from the nature of humankind.

Aquinas lived in the 13th century, though, and his formulation out of the natural law didn't occur until the writings of Aristotle were restored to the West.  It is Aristotle, after all, who puts such an emphasis on "the nature of the thing" in determining questions about ethics and justice (and indeed even physics).  Those writings came to the Church out of Spain, especially following the conquest of Toledo in 1085.  When the Christians found themselves in possession of the great libraries of Toledo, rather than burn them (as the Mongols did to the libraries in Baghdad and Persia) they set up teams of translators.  Many Christians who spoke and read Arabic lived in the city, as well as Jewish scholars who could read multiple languages.  Translation from Arabic into Latin and other languages accessible in Europe became a focus of the Crown of Castille, which provided the funding for the efforts led by the Church.

Before that, marriage did not have the natural law reading in the West.  It still had a unique character in Christian civilization, though, opposed to the contractual reading.  Marriage was a contract in Islam.  Dr. Zorgati explains (p. 102):

According to Charles Donahue, “the most frequently made comparative statement about the Christian law of marriage, on the one hand, and the Islamic [ . . . ] or the Jewish [ . . . ], on the other, is that marriage is a sacrament in Christianity but it is not in Islam or Judaism” (Donahue, 2008, 46). In studies dedicated to Muslim marriages, it is often its contractual nature which is at the forefront. 6 However, the opposition between marriage as contract and marriage as sacrament has to be nuanced. First, there is not one Islamic marriage contract, but many, since different legal schools developed different requirements for the marriage contract, and because people could add individual stipulations to their contracts. Second, although the idea of marriage as a sacrament has roots back to Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, it was first translated into legal doctrine in the twelfth century (Donahue, 2008, 47). According to Islamic law, “marriage is a contract (ʿaqd), established by bilateral agreement” (Ali, 2008, 11). It is a mundane transaction (muʿāmala) which some jurists also saw as an act of worship (ʿibāda) since according to one ḥadīth a married person has fulfilled half of his or her religion (Ali, 2008, 11). Moreover, one of the essential features of the contract is the offer (ījāb) made by the bride’s family and the acceptance (qabūl) of the groom’s family (Ali, 2008, 11– 13). Other important elements are the dower (ṣadāq) and the role played by the guardian and the witnesses, as well as the consent of the contracting parties.

The Church's idea ran in contrast to the actual practice of the Christian people:  before the 12th century, Christians tended to prefer arranged marriages based on social class and the preservation of the stability of the family.  As the Church developed the idea of marriage as a sacrament, though, the sacred character of the bond tended to undermine family authority (Zorgati p. 104):

The insistence of the free consent of the parties must be understood in relation to the developing view that marriage constituted a sacrament. Canonists writing in the decades before Alexander III insisted on the sacramental character of marriage. For example, Peter Lombard established that marriage was one of the seven sacraments of the Church, whereas Hugh of Saint Victor explored the etymology of ‘sacrament’ that he thought corresponded to ‘holy sign’ (sacrum signum). 10 Hence, in addition to the received idea that the relationship between husband and wife was analogous to the relationship between Christ and the Church— a mystery, or sacrament, according to Saint Paul— he saw marriage as a sign of the mutual love between the soul and God. This new idea had, according to Donahue, an impact on the doctrine of free consent in marriage which developed at the same time: “A theology that sees in marriage a sign of the mutual yearning of the soul for God and of God for the soul would tend to emphasize, as Hugh does, the element of choice in marriage, and would tend to exclude the choice of anyone else as being relevant to the question of the formation of marriage” (Donahue, 2008, 54). 

That's an interesting view, and one that is in contrast with the view that Aquinas came to in the next century.  The principal end of matrimony in that view, derived from "the nature of the thing," is filling the need for humanity to reproduce itself across generations:  not only to procreate, but to educate and develop children so they are able to sustain themselves and support the greater society of which they are part.

Unlike the Islamic and Jewish contractual view, the Christian view permitted the two parties who loved each other to come together regardless of their rank in society, but only by their own free choice.  Also unlike the contractual views, however, divorce was forbidden.  The Love that could unify a man and a woman of different ranks into one flesh was a miracle.  None should dare to live in defiance of such a miracle.

No idle hands

This pattern is absorbing me as thoroughly as the golden Ring in Frodo's head:  day or night, all I want to do lately is crochet it.  When I finish a length sufficient for a bedskirt in this thick "bedspread weight" thread, I think I'll start a new one in a very fine thread, to edge the pillowcases with.

With All Due Respect, Have You Gentlemen Lost Your Minds?

InstaPundit approvingly cites Walter Russell Mead:

Air conditioning in warm regions uses far less energy than heating in cold regions. 

So if you want to help save the planet, move out of Vermont and get yourself to Alabama where people know how to live in harmony with Mother Gaia. Moving out of New England could be the purest form of environmental activism; your selfish, earth destroying choice of living in Massachusetts in killing us all. And as for Canada, Gaia’s message is clear: shut it down, now. The Germans for their part could help the planet by moving to Spain and Greece; this might also help with Europe’s financial woes. 

Perhaps the blue model politicians whose tax and spend policies are driving businesses and residents out of their states are smarter than they look. They could be green activists, steadily working to save the earth by driving people out of the northeast. We look forward to green activists introducing legislation in Congress to levy new taxes on those whose choice to live in cold states imposes costs on the more virtuous and eco-friendly inhabitants of Texas and South Carolina.

It only seems fair. You do care about the planet, don’t you?

Am I seriously reading a professor from South Carolina and another from Tennessee suggesting that what we need is for more Yankees to move down South?  Is this what you want for the good people of Alabama?

(I haven't forgotten you, Raven!  But still:  Bernie Sanders voters moving to Alabama?  Madness.)

RIchard Feynman is my hero

This is from a oft-quoted speech, Feynman's 1974 commencement speech at Cal Tech, but I never can get enough of it:

This long history of learning how not to fool ourselves — of having utter scientific integrity — is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis. 

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I far as I can tell, everything Feynman ever wrote is worth reading, especially "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", "What Do You Care What Other People Think?", and "Q.E.D."  The first two are reminiscences; the third is one of the best pieces of popularized science I've ever read.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

Instructions from the Bench

The judge in A.W.'s case advocates for how he thinks the matter should be settled.

THE COURT: –You’ve decided to battle, and he comes back. And see, you’re — you — you’re the kind of guy, you don’t want to get into this to settle this, mano y mano. You want to get all these friends who got nothing else to do with their time, in this judge’s opinion, because — my God, I’m a little bit older than you are, and I haven’t got enough time in the day to do all the things I want to do. And I thought by retirement, I would have less to do. I got more! Because everybody knows I’m free! So they all come to me. But you, you are starting a — a conflagration, for lack of a better word, and you’re just letting the thing go recklessly no matter where it goes. I mean, you get some — and I’m going to use word I (ph) — freak somewhere up Oklahoma, got nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things in the world he can do to this poor gentleman. What right has that guy got to do it? 

WALKER: He has no right to do that, Your Honor. 

THE COURT: Well, he’s — you incited him. 

WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though. 

THE COURT: Forget Bradenburg [sic]. Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world. But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly. 

WALKER: I’m not sure what that means, your honor. 

THE COURT: –Very quickly. And I’m not going to talk about those ways, but boy, it ended fast. I even can tell you, when I grew up in my community, you wanted to date an Italian girl, you had to get the Italian boy’s permission. But that was the old neighborhoods back in the city. And it was really fair. When someone did something up there to you, your sister, your girlfriend, you got some friends to take them for a ride in the back of the truck. 

WALKER: Well, Your Honor, what– 

THE COURT: –That ended it. You guys have got this new mechanical stuff out here, the electronic stuff, that you can just ruin somebody without doing anything. But you started it.

So, you know, I guess you know what the court in Maryland thinks you should do next.   If anyone complains, tell them the judge so instructed you from the bench.

Considering the President's Economic Vision

The ads are already out:  President Obama said at a press conference that "the private sector is doing fine."  Republicans are playing the clip of those few words, merry in the sense that it demonstrates that the President is out of touch.

Let's consider the remark in context, though, because it's a revealing description of how he thinks about the economy.

The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone.  

The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government  and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

What's really interesting about this set of remarks is not the factual claim, but the interpretation of the facts.  The facts cited are roughly correct:  for example, government jobs really have declined rapidly during the Obama administration.  The reason is roughly what he says it is:  lots of state and local governments operate under balanced budget amendments, and aren't free to deficit-spend past their eyeballs, hair, and ten-gallon hat.

What we're left with, then, is the interpretation of the facts.  It's pretty clear that the recovery is unusually anemic by historic standards.  It's also true that the 4.3 million jobs 'created' haven't made up for the number of jobs lost:  when you take account of the number of people who have left the workforce entirely, things look different.

Also, we can see that the private jobs that do exist are objectively worse than the jobs that used to exist.  Consider the movement from full-time to part-time jobs by employers -- a way of avoiding having to provide the benefits that have become an expected part of full-time labor in America, and thus a way of paying workers lower total compensation for each hour of work.  Or consider the increasing classification of lower-wage jobs as "seasonal" rather than "part-time."  A seasonal worker can be paid below minimum wage.  And of course, raises and bonuses for lucky workers who do still have full-time jobs are not much forthcoming, while the costs of energy and food are spiking.

All this means that workers are being pinched horribly:  many can't find work, and if they can it pays less than it used to pay, especially relative to the costs they encounter.  They may now  have to buy benefits on the open market, where they are also more expensive.  Companies are finding people will take these jobs in spite of the vastly reduced compensation, though, because there are so many people who have no work that the market value of your work is just less than it used to be.  Presumably you aren't a worse worker, but you're not worth as much anymore.

This is interpreted as "fine."  OK; that's the Republicans' point.

What I find as interesting, though, is the complaint about the shrinking of government.  What the President really finds to be out of order is that state and local governments are having to respond to the economic crisis by tightening belts.  The main thing he wants to fix is to achieve higher levels of government employment.

The thing is, though, this was a policy decision by the electorates of these states and localities.  They can change the laws themselves, if they want to do so.  What they decided was that, during hard times when tax revenues are lower, government should spend less.  That means cutting some of the nice things that we enjoy government doing -- parks and recreation services, librarians, and so forth -- as well as being more careful with essential services.  Perhaps taxes or fees can be raised to pay for these, but if not, services must be more carefully allocated so as to do with less.

If people get tired of this, they can vote to rescind balanced budget amendments.  They want it this way; and at various times, 32 states have passed resolutions asking for a Constitutional Convention to require the Federal government to act this way as well.

So what we have here is a stark difference of opinion, among broad sections of the public, about how government should respond to fiscal crises.  The President is painting this as a government failure, but in fact it's the state and local governments acting exactly the way their citizens want them to act.

There's another issue behind the decline in government jobs.  The failure of Congress to pass a budget for years now has led to tremendous uncertainty; combined with the failure of the so-called "super-committee," even many Federal departments are going to get cut and nobody can be quite sure how big the cuts will be, or whether Congress will finally move to avoid them.  Thus, even some Federal departments -- certainly this is true for DOD -- have great uncertainty that is keeping them from starting new projects or hiring new people.

This last is a much clearer case of government failure.  Congress has failed as an institution, but not in failing to provide extra goodies for state and local governments to use in dodging the will of their constituents.  Congress has failed to do its most basic duty for the good order of the Federal government.

That's the one aspect of the situation the President didn't talk about.  He sees a problem where state and local governments are acting appropriately according to the mandate they have received from their citizens; he sees no problem where Congress is blatantly failing to perform its most basic function.

The private sector?  Well, whether or not you agree that it's "fine," it should be obvious that it's not of particular interest to him.

Let Me Just Say...

...that I am always surprised by how much energy there is in a big white oak hitting the ground.

Venus transit

My husband found me this spectacular shot of the transit. I forgot to mention in my prior post why people went to such trouble to view the transit every century or so from as many spots on the globe as they could manage. (Captain Cook, for instance, arranged to watch it from the South Pacific.) The purpose was to use the parallax effect to estimate the distance of Venus from the Sun. Astronomers already had a pretty good idea of the relative size of various planetary orbits, but hadn't figured out a way to put an absolute measurement on any of them. Accurate measurements of the timing of the Venus transit from distant spots on Earth permitted a triangulation that yielded not only the distance of Venus from the Sun but also, by extension, the distance of the other planets.

The stages of grief

I can't find a direct link to this video on YouTube, so you just have to click through to the HotAir article, which also has another amusing clip, but it's the Jon Stewart routine that really cracked me up.

Something tells me these guys may not enjoy the rest of 2012.