There are some competing historical analogies for the position of Democratic leaders today. Dr. Mead and Mr. Sullivan think that Obama is a Tory.
Meanwhile, another analogy is a bit more medieval: it sees the struggle as a fight between the clerics and the yeomen.
The latter opinion makes a little more sense to me. I always thought that the new Robin Hood was the most politically relevant movie of recent years.
If you haven't watched it in a while, now's a good time.
Cryptology
So, just for fun, give your best deciphering of the following sentence. Yes, it's one sentence.
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.Via D29. If you want to check your answer against mine, read the comments there.
--Judith Butler, a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley
Sleipnir
Not a bad bit of work, and they even got the color right. It's an amusing story, how Sleipnir came to be born; Njörðr mocks Loki over it in the Lokasenna.
News you can use
Unless you speak Japanese (and perhaps even if you do), you can just skip to 0:50 on this video, since it's hard to imagine the narration is adding anything.
Muad'dib
Headline: "School asks deaf preschooler to change his sign language name."
Why? Because weapons are forbidden at school.
Why? Because weapons are forbidden at school.
US Special Forces Unhappy with CJSOTF CONOP Process
There's a lot of cursing in this one, even for a Hitler Downfall video.
If it is in fact true that an ODA -- that is, a Special Forces A-team -- cannot leave the wire without filing a 45-slide Powerpoint presentation explaining their mission.... I don't even know how to finish that sentence. The first part of the sentence is so unbelievable that no concluding remarks really make sense.
It's as if I were trying to finish a sentence that began, "If it is in fact true that monkey-shaped leprechauns have begun to sprout from the acorns of hickory trees..." Yes, I could append some more words, but no set of words can repair the nonsense embedded in the opening assumption. Hickory trees don't have acorns, and ODAs don't have to file lengthy permission slips with a Combined-Joint-level headquarters in order to go outside the wire. The monkey-shaped leprechauns, however, may be real.
If it is in fact true that an ODA -- that is, a Special Forces A-team -- cannot leave the wire without filing a 45-slide Powerpoint presentation explaining their mission.... I don't even know how to finish that sentence. The first part of the sentence is so unbelievable that no concluding remarks really make sense.
It's as if I were trying to finish a sentence that began, "If it is in fact true that monkey-shaped leprechauns have begun to sprout from the acorns of hickory trees..." Yes, I could append some more words, but no set of words can repair the nonsense embedded in the opening assumption. Hickory trees don't have acorns, and ODAs don't have to file lengthy permission slips with a Combined-Joint-level headquarters in order to go outside the wire. The monkey-shaped leprechauns, however, may be real.
Regulars
The most disturbing part of this story is the unit the men came from: 4/3 BCT. It's a relatively new Brigade Combat Team, stood up to help handle the rotation issues of the recent war, but that's a minor point. The main point is that this is a unit of regulars, part of a division that is as regular as any in the Army.
Hopefully the future reporting on this issue, and the trial itself, will reveal details that make this less damning than it initially appears. Bombing the fountain at Forsyth Park? There's no political purpose to such a thing; almost all you'd be killing is innocent children.
Hopefully the future reporting on this issue, and the trial itself, will reveal details that make this less damning than it initially appears. Bombing the fountain at Forsyth Park? There's no political purpose to such a thing; almost all you'd be killing is innocent children.
One of the Big Questions
Bill Nye 'The Science Guy' wants you to know that evolution is a fact, and anyone who dissents is holding us all back. I'm going to argue that opposition to evolution in its standard form has a very respectable standing, and that in fact it continues to be popular because the argument against it points to a real weakness in the theory. A successful synthesis of the theory with the objection is necessary, but it requires a better understanding of what I take to be one of the biggest, and hardest, problems in science: how, and exactly why, order arises from chaos.*
I.
It seems to be a law of nature that order does arise from chaos. In fact, I might propose that it is one of only two things I can think of right now that really are laws of nature,** in the sense of universal truths that we see ordering creation. Both of them are strangely linked to scale. One of them is the law of non-contradiction, which applies with iron force at levels above the quantum, but seems subject to looseness in the absence of observers at the smaller levels. The other is that irreducibly probabilistic features at this smaller level prove to give rise to remarkable order at the highest scales.
But let's start with the objection. One of the things that 'everybody knows' about evolution (and the closely allied theory of natural selection) is that Darwin is the starting point for it. This well known fact, however, is not at all true. The theory that the vast profusion of strange forms in nature arose accidentally over time is one that Aristotle argues against in the Physics II, in a context that makes it clear that it was popularly held among some Greek thinkers. Let's look at the argument, because it's actually a pretty plausible one. He is arguing that Nature acts for a cause, and he treats the counterargument:
Still, we now know that Aristotle is just wrong about this, right? That's the point we started with. Things that come about by chance do exhibit extraordinary order, at least when viewed at the proper scale. Far from being evidence of purpose in Nature, this is simply a law of nature. Wait, what? Read that again: why should a purposeless nature have laws? Because it does, that's all, goes the argument. We observe them, and we aren't going to deny the plain evidence of our eyes.
II.
There is another problem, though, which is that evolutionary theorists still need purpose in nature. It is, in fact, their explanations of this sort that strike us as least plausible -- but they are indispensable. Observe:
Evolutionary theory argues that there is something directing the process: survival. Most of the random mutations prove not to be any good, and are discarded via the simple means of death. Some of them are -- so the theory goes -- and by providing an evolutionary advantage, they are sometimes retained and forwarded. At the proper scale, it ends up looking like excellent design, but the only purpose directing the order was survival.
But this is inadequate, and not merely for the reasons that our feminist readers keep mentioning (i.e., that most of these arguments for why a given natural quality is 'advantageous' could just as easily be built out the other way). It's not just that the explanations read like 'just so stories' that are demonstrably inadequate. It's also that we see similar patters of order arising from chaos in things that are inorganic, and not at all motivated by survival.
That suggests that there is something else at work -- something that (if we view the scale in a way that favors the large scale) appears to be an ordering principle in Nature itself. It could be a unifying principle that explains the rise of life, as well as why the survival principle falls in so nicely with the inorganic ordering principles. That's just what Aristotle was talking about, and it's what our modern Christian objectors see also.
Alternatively, it could prove to be multiple causes that happen to align in effect. In any case, we ought not to shove aside the objection as meaningless or empty. There is a problem there, and it's based on a very old argument with a very respectable pedigree. I think it deserves to be considered more carefully, even if its principle proponents don't always quite know why they object as they do.
* Why "chaos" when there seems to be some level of order, i.e., probabilistic order? I'm using the term to indicate where even orderly behavior is nevertheless irreducibly contaminated with randomness: the best we can do is to provide a waveform of possibilities, but any of these can be realized. As D. M. Armstrong points out, a probabilistic "law" permits even the most improbable outcome -- in theory, in fact, it does so infinitely, so that every single case ordered by the law could turn out to be the most improbable outcome. That's a pretty chaotic kind of law!
** One might argue for things like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the law of gravity, but these cases are more problematic than they appear. In addition to a certain odd paradox of observations, a law that implies increasing order on higher levels of scale is not necessarily compatible with the Second Law; it may be that the appearance of increasing entropy is related to the scale of observations. In terms of gravity, the proponents of the Higgs field argue that it is not a law of nature, but a function of the existence of the Higgs Boson, which particle physicists think they have demonstrated. If that is the case, gravity arose shortly after the Big Bang, and is not a product of "Nature" on the grand scale, except insofar as nature is permeated by the Higgs field.
Of course, much of this is quite speculative physics. I don't take a firm position on any of it, because my training is in philosophy and history; there is always more to learn.
It seems to be a law of nature that order does arise from chaos. In fact, I might propose that it is one of only two things I can think of right now that really are laws of nature,** in the sense of universal truths that we see ordering creation. Both of them are strangely linked to scale. One of them is the law of non-contradiction, which applies with iron force at levels above the quantum, but seems subject to looseness in the absence of observers at the smaller levels. The other is that irreducibly probabilistic features at this smaller level prove to give rise to remarkable order at the highest scales.
But let's start with the objection. One of the things that 'everybody knows' about evolution (and the closely allied theory of natural selection) is that Darwin is the starting point for it. This well known fact, however, is not at all true. The theory that the vast profusion of strange forms in nature arose accidentally over time is one that Aristotle argues against in the Physics II, in a context that makes it clear that it was popularly held among some Greek thinkers. Let's look at the argument, because it's actually a pretty plausible one. He is arguing that Nature acts for a cause, and he treats the counterargument:
A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.This argument should make clear that our modern deniers of evolutionary theory -- though many of them do not know it -- are inheritors of Aristotle's view. This is not a surprise, since most of them are devout Christians, and Aristotle's view was brought into the Catholic doctrine before the Reformation.
Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true.
Still, we now know that Aristotle is just wrong about this, right? That's the point we started with. Things that come about by chance do exhibit extraordinary order, at least when viewed at the proper scale. Far from being evidence of purpose in Nature, this is simply a law of nature. Wait, what? Read that again: why should a purposeless nature have laws? Because it does, that's all, goes the argument. We observe them, and we aren't going to deny the plain evidence of our eyes.
There is another problem, though, which is that evolutionary theorists still need purpose in nature. It is, in fact, their explanations of this sort that strike us as least plausible -- but they are indispensable. Observe:
Once upon a time, there was an ape that stood up. Why it stood up nobody knows, but once upright it found it could use its hands to fashion tools from sticks and stones. So it stayed standing up. And once it decided to stay standing up, its brain started to grow. Why its brain started to grow nobody knows, but with a bigger brain the ape, which was by now an ape-man, could make better tools and even speak. Why it started to speak nobody knows. And by then it wasn’t an ape-man any more, but a human. And those humans with the most developed brains – Homo sapiens – used their cunning to spread throughout the world. All the many other kinds of human and ape-man died. Why they died nobody knows. When the Homo sapiens were lords of all, some of them became curious about where they had come from. Having a poor collective memory, they at first thought the world had simply been handed to them by a god who happened to look just like they did. But a few began using their inflated brains to try to piece together a story about how it had all begun with an ape that had once stood up....This is the very problem Aristotle was pointing out as a proof that this kind of explanation could not be correct. His example is your teeth: your mouth is very well ordered for the kind of food you need to eat. Things that happen randomly do not give rise to such perfect order: it would be like a rockslide just happening to give rise to a perfectly-formed house, and not once, but over and over. If we observed such rockslides making houses for men, we would have to say that there was some reason for it -- something informing the process that was directed at house-building.
There remains something about the evolutionary account of our origins that sounds a little like a just-so story.
Evolutionary theory argues that there is something directing the process: survival. Most of the random mutations prove not to be any good, and are discarded via the simple means of death. Some of them are -- so the theory goes -- and by providing an evolutionary advantage, they are sometimes retained and forwarded. At the proper scale, it ends up looking like excellent design, but the only purpose directing the order was survival.
But this is inadequate, and not merely for the reasons that our feminist readers keep mentioning (i.e., that most of these arguments for why a given natural quality is 'advantageous' could just as easily be built out the other way). It's not just that the explanations read like 'just so stories' that are demonstrably inadequate. It's also that we see similar patters of order arising from chaos in things that are inorganic, and not at all motivated by survival.
That suggests that there is something else at work -- something that (if we view the scale in a way that favors the large scale) appears to be an ordering principle in Nature itself. It could be a unifying principle that explains the rise of life, as well as why the survival principle falls in so nicely with the inorganic ordering principles. That's just what Aristotle was talking about, and it's what our modern Christian objectors see also.
Alternatively, it could prove to be multiple causes that happen to align in effect. In any case, we ought not to shove aside the objection as meaningless or empty. There is a problem there, and it's based on a very old argument with a very respectable pedigree. I think it deserves to be considered more carefully, even if its principle proponents don't always quite know why they object as they do.
* Why "chaos" when there seems to be some level of order, i.e., probabilistic order? I'm using the term to indicate where even orderly behavior is nevertheless irreducibly contaminated with randomness: the best we can do is to provide a waveform of possibilities, but any of these can be realized. As D. M. Armstrong points out, a probabilistic "law" permits even the most improbable outcome -- in theory, in fact, it does so infinitely, so that every single case ordered by the law could turn out to be the most improbable outcome. That's a pretty chaotic kind of law!
** One might argue for things like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the law of gravity, but these cases are more problematic than they appear. In addition to a certain odd paradox of observations, a law that implies increasing order on higher levels of scale is not necessarily compatible with the Second Law; it may be that the appearance of increasing entropy is related to the scale of observations. In terms of gravity, the proponents of the Higgs field argue that it is not a law of nature, but a function of the existence of the Higgs Boson, which particle physicists think they have demonstrated. If that is the case, gravity arose shortly after the Big Bang, and is not a product of "Nature" on the grand scale, except insofar as nature is permeated by the Higgs field.
Of course, much of this is quite speculative physics. I don't take a firm position on any of it, because my training is in philosophy and history; there is always more to learn.
Maps online
Say what?
I was casually reading an article describing the pain of a Ron Paul supporter who doesn't want to throw her vote away writing in her favorite candidate, but feels that otherwise she's got only a choice between "welfare and warfare." Then she remarked, to illustrate that there's nothing to choose: "One wants the fishing pole, the other wants the shoe." I'm stumped, even after some search-engine work. Does anyone here know the joke or story she's referring to?
All Good Things...
It was very pleasant not thinking about politics for a few days. However, the good citizen cannot leave his duties for long, nor entrust them to others.
Either that, or -- crazy talk, I know -- you could allow other citizens to be prepared to do their duty to assist.
If you view this as something that occurs with statistical regularity, we might start to ask, "What can we do to raise this figure?" Quite a lot of things, if you wanted to do so: especially in places like Chicago and New York, a robust police and private partnership could be highly effective. Consider the benefits of offering free training to citizens, helping them to understand how to report and how to assist, and making sure the police understood to expect and and how to respond to the assistance they were getting.
I would think you could move a substantial number of those officers out of the "killed in the line of duty" column, and over to the "saved by citizen assistance" column. Is that worth doing?
Police: All Empire State shooting victims were wounded by officersThe last time I was in New York, the police I saw were carrying automatic rifles. Maybe semi-automatic ones would be a better choice for them than handguns: a single shot is both more accurate, and more likely to drop the target, so that fewer rounds are necessary.
...The officers unloaded 16 rounds in the shadow of the Empire State Building at a disgruntled former apparel designer, killing him after he engaged in a gunbattle with police, authorities said.
Three passersby sustained direct gunshot wounds, while the remaining six were hit by fragments, according to New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All injuries were caused by police, he said Saturday.
Either that, or -- crazy talk, I know -- you could allow other citizens to be prepared to do their duty to assist.
The FBI reports that in 2010, 19 police officers were slain while alone on patrol. Seven officers were killed with their own weapons. Of 56 officers killed, 16 had fired their own weapons, as Harrison did.... FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports show that private citizens killed police attackers only three times annually since 2000. Yet an unusual and compelling story of self-defense by a concealed carry licensee gets mentioned only by local media."Only three times a year" is a much larger figure when the total number of officers killed is below 60. Those three would nearly round it out to sixty -- except five percent of the time, an ordinary citizen stepped up and saved the cop.
If you view this as something that occurs with statistical regularity, we might start to ask, "What can we do to raise this figure?" Quite a lot of things, if you wanted to do so: especially in places like Chicago and New York, a robust police and private partnership could be highly effective. Consider the benefits of offering free training to citizens, helping them to understand how to report and how to assist, and making sure the police understood to expect and and how to respond to the assistance they were getting.
I would think you could move a substantial number of those officers out of the "killed in the line of duty" column, and over to the "saved by citizen assistance" column. Is that worth doing?
Dukes of Hazzard Day
In the process of looking for fun things to do this weekend, we came across a motorcycle gathering that was built around a Dodge Charger.
The Confederate flags go with the Dukes of Hazzard theme, as well as with a motorcycle rally in Georgia, but it's pretty clear that most of the very many bikers flying it did so all the time. In some circles this is taken as being tantamount to a hate crime, but having grown up in a place where the KKK felt free to move about openly, I think I can fairly say that racism is not the intent of the symbol among most of those flying it today. There were a number of black bikers there, including a US Navy veteran, who were obviously quite comfortable and who were plainly as welcome as anyone else.
That's good. I have a great deal of sympathy with the "Heritage, not Hate" movement, but it has to really be true if it's to count. I'm glad to see that, more and more, it seems to be.
Why "Dukes of Hazzard Day"? Nobody seemed to know or care, but there was a General Lee.
A shiny chopper, with a Confederate helmet sticker.
I have it on good authority that Elizabeth Warren's great-great grandmother...
Brynhildr was there.
Lots of Veterans were there, as usual with biker events, but the 7th ID insignia is one you rarely see.
Lots of Confederate flags everywhere...
...but I hadn't seen the fuzzy-dice version before.
The Confederate flags go with the Dukes of Hazzard theme, as well as with a motorcycle rally in Georgia, but it's pretty clear that most of the very many bikers flying it did so all the time. In some circles this is taken as being tantamount to a hate crime, but having grown up in a place where the KKK felt free to move about openly, I think I can fairly say that racism is not the intent of the symbol among most of those flying it today. There were a number of black bikers there, including a US Navy veteran, who were obviously quite comfortable and who were plainly as welcome as anyone else.
That's good. I have a great deal of sympathy with the "Heritage, not Hate" movement, but it has to really be true if it's to count. I'm glad to see that, more and more, it seems to be.
The First Man to Walk on the Moon
Neil Armstrong died today. It was an honor to have shared the world with him for so long. I wonder if we shall live to share it with the first man to walk on Mars?
Kittehs on roombas
Most of this post was about weaponizing roombas (into "doombas"), but the really useful innovations involved cats.
The Joy of Autumn
As we enjoy the first hints of autumnal air, we think of the joys to come. The Stone Mountain Scottish Highland Games are awaiting us, if we can make it to October.
If you're in Europe, Denmark will be hosting the annual Medieval Festival of Europe this weekend in Horsens.
Portugal does its big Medieval festival in August, too. I guess it's nicer out there on the Med.
Further north, the Nordic Festival for Medieval Music is typically in September. Here is something from 2010:
If you're in Europe, Denmark will be hosting the annual Medieval Festival of Europe this weekend in Horsens.
Portugal does its big Medieval festival in August, too. I guess it's nicer out there on the Med.
Further north, the Nordic Festival for Medieval Music is typically in September. Here is something from 2010:
BSBFB: Greatness
The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys is the source for this. Here is the comment that goes with the video there:
Perhaps it is presumptuous for me to say, but I understand the men on the ladder with the prybar entirely. They are my brothers.
I do not know how I've woken up in a world where 99 percent of the population never think to do anything but point their crummy cameraphones at whatever calamity is ongoing.
The man with the prybar is worth a thousand of them.
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