Platforms

I find it interesting that the platforms of the parties have been allowed to be written in such a purely principled way.

The Republican platform on abortion calls for a total ban in all circumstances, even when the mother would otherwise die (and the child with her). The only way it could be purer would be to call for punishing abortionists as murderers.

The Democratic platform, by contrast, goes so far as to call for free abortions ("regardless of ability to pay") in all circumstances whatsoever, presumably right up to the moment of birth. Not only shall we permit any woman who wishes to kill a perfectly healthy child that is two minutes from birth, we shall require Catholics and Mormons and Muslims to help pay for it. Everyone will contribute to this national sacrament: we will all be accomplices, we will all provide material support for it. It's not clear that any greater purity is possible; I suppose we could endorse infanticide after birth. This weekend I read of a young woman who had killed her child shortly after it was born, and who is now on trial. If she had made up her mind about it just a few days earlier, she would have been entitled to kill the child, and you and I would be required to pay for the procedure.

There is no wide public support for either set of propositions. The actual politicians who are running rarely adhere to these pure positions themselves, and might well not vote for a bill brought before them that attempted to enact these rules. The voters would probably punish anyone who actually attempted to enact either set of rules.

The Driving Instructor

News articles about Clint Eastwood's performance at the RNC compare his work to an old Bob Newhart sketch. Here's the one they're talking about; see for yourself.

Yep

Well, who cares, as long as it looks good for me?

I'm an old non-com who, as a bachelor lived in the barracks, and as such I'm well aware of the excitement that permeates any military barracks in the days leading up to a four-day, holiday weekend like Labor Day. Virtually every soldier has made big plans to escape his military existence for four precious days and spend that time with family or friends. Many will have to use the first and fourth days for travel to and from distant destinations, which means only two, crucial days of holiday pleasure for them, sandwiched between two less pleasant days of travel, especially if they must fly commercially. Take away just one of those days and many of those soldiers' plans will either have to be scrapped entirely or the time at home or whatever destination, be reduced to a single day. Plans made long in advance have to be rescheduled, a sometimes quite difficult task when it regards holiday weekend travel: flight changes may be impossible and hotels are booked solid; neither may allow changes in reservations without severe financial penalties.

So, some hotshot in the Obama campaign, feeling badly stung by the sparse turnouts for the president's visits to other locales, gets a bright idea of how to produce a really big crowd for a photo op: "Hey, let's schedule one for some military facility where the commander can be ordered to produce a big audience in a sufficiently impressive backdrop."

Hey, Look Who's Back!

Turns out he tried to escape down the overflow from the tub. Didn't work out for him, in the short term. In the long term, though, it's much better for him. He's doing time in a big plastic trash can until we find a better habitat. Going to grow the basement dragon up big and strong before we turn him loose to eat the mice.

We agreed on "Ratbane," from the names you recommended. I liked several of the entries, but I'm not the only vote around here.

One more from Rocket Science

Two hamsters, one wheel:

Not the usual graphic

Viewed from the South Pole, all hurricane tracks since 1851.

Brave New Pixar

I still haven't gotten around to seeing "Brave," which Grim wrote about earlier this year.  Here's a new review that speaks to many of the issues he raised, and a few he didn't:

I suppose most girls remember when they became aware of themselves as specifically female viewers.  Growing up in the eighties, I watched movies about boys and girls with equal relish, empathizing with the protagonists and getting totally absorbed in story without my parts getting consciously in the way.  When I realized the boys in my classes didn’t do the same thing — they refused to see themselves in female protagonists and found the prospect humiliating to contemplate — I felt I had overstepped my bounds.  Feeling simultaneously embarrassed at being so profligate with my sympathy and spiteful towards those who weren’t, I started watching movies the way I was supposed to:  as a girl, specifically. 

Boy, was it bleak. 

If you don’t get to be Indiana Jones and have to think about how he is with girls, if you have to wonder, while watching Treasure Island, whether any of the characters you loved would even talk to you, movies become kind of painful.  You do find ways around it. For one thing, you start actively seeking out stories where people don’t rule you out quite so much.  You look for “girl movies.”  Barring some truly wonderful exceptions, you get used to eating the same three meals over and over, forever.  Without thinking about it too hard I’ll approximate them as spunkiness, pathos, and transformation.  Working Girl, He’s Just Not That Into You, Grease.  Again, some of these are great.  Most are derivative.

The somewhat tortured exegesis that follows describes a different sort of meal.

The British, At Least, Were Impressed

Ms. Janet Daily writes in The Daily Telegraph:

[T]his campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time...

You can [given the new economic reality] decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished.

She offers some analysis to support this proposition, and considers the shape of the American presidential contest.

She has another point at the end that may be worth considering as much as anything else: many Americans voted for then-Senator Obama in 2008 to prove that America could elect a black president. Yet it will be when we can evaluate one on the same terms as any other President that we will have proven that we are truly post-racial.

UPDATE: Speaking of the latter, 54% say that the President does not deserve re-election if we consider his record alone.

Whence This Fear of Judgment?

Via FARK, a news story about a new steak-serving restaurant that is only for women:

The Desperate Housewives star is, according to folks at Perez Hilton, apparently geared up to open a women-only steakhouse in Las Vegas, so that women can give into their secret cravings for delicious meat WITHOUT the judging eyes of their male companions upon them.

Pardon? Is that genuinely a thing that women are worried about when tucking into a juicy plate of peppered steak?

I don't know that it is, but this fear of being judged is something that I hear from female acquaintances very often. It is expressed as resentment of people that they think were judging them (based on some internal intuition about what those people must-have-been / might-have-been thinking); or it's expressed as relief and comfort that they think they are in an area where no one will be judging them; or it's expressed aspirationally as their hope or intention for a given group ('This should be a judgment-free zone'); or it's expressed ironically, but with the clear underlying intent that they should be free to behave in a given way without being judged ('No judging!').

Now many of these same women make judgments about others that are quite harsh, so perhaps they are simply pleading to be excepted from a viciousness that they know very well from their own hearts. However, some of them are kind-hearted themselves, whose fear is simply the fear that others will look on them with disapproval.

I don't understand the fear. For one thing, judgement is a good thing: it is an essential part of wisdom and the good life. Everyone should be trained in the faculty of judgment, so that they can make good decisions about what (and, indeed, whom) to admit into their lives, and in what proportions.

Furthermore, as the judgments of others about your internal states are necessarily made in ignorance, the judgments of others are a tool you can use for any honorable purpose. (Indeed, you can use it for quite dishonorable purposes, though I hope you will not.) People make judgments about me all the time, and I help make it easy for them. That their judgments are inaccurate does not bother me; in fact, it is to my advantage to be misjudged, since it leaves me with unsuspected capacities that can be brought to bear if necessary. For example if strangers judge me to be the kind of man best left alone, then I have the pleasure of being left alone. Their judgment is not to be feared, but engaged and used as one more tool in the pursuit of the good life.

I would urge you: Do not fear judgment, except that of God!

Make Up Your Mind, Joe

Joe Klein, Friday:

If the Democratic Party truly wants to be a party of inclusion, it must reach out to those who are currently excluded from its identity politics. It needs to disband its caucuses.

Joe Klein, Yesterday.

It's possible that this is more a critique of television than it is of Mr. Klein. If he'd been given longer to make his point, perhaps he'd have brought it around to the same place. Clearly he feels the need to preface this point (as he did in print) with a long preamble about how much he supports and approves of everything the caucus-based system has built; as well as a plain expression of support for the members and goals of each of the various caucuses he wants disbanded.

Perhaps you just can't say something that delicate on television.

The Wife Brings Home a Pet

So tonight the wife came in carrying one of her socks in her hand, instead of wearing it on her foot as you might expect. One end was tied off.

"Look what I found at work!" she said. "It's just the cutest little thing!"

Her plan had been to raise this one up until its big enough to compete with the big female rat snake who lives in the garden. Then I meant to let him be the basement dragon. I prefer a snake to the other means of rodent control.

However, within five minutes he had escaped the bath tub and down the heating/air vent, which means he's probably hunting mice (or at least spiders) in the basement even now.

I'm trying to think of a good name for a basement dragon.

POTUS Pizza

Today we have an article explaining that the President is pandering especially hard to young people right now, because they are strangely un-energetic about supporting him this year.  Having just given out White House beer recipes yesterday, today he is trumpeting a local college pizzeria that has a pie called "the POTUS."  Apparently it has pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, black olives, and onion -- the latter few so 'you can tell Michelle' that you had some vegetables on your pizza.

I cite this article not for the news content, nor for analysis on what if anything it means about the race.  No, I cite it simply for the first entry in the comments section:

Wingnut • 21 mins ago

They also have a Biden pizza which is basically tomato sauce and parmesan served on your foot.

Bacon, Bread, and Fowl

It's a fine fowl that comes wrapped in bacon.



This one was cooked at five hundred degrees in black iron, for about an hour, and then broiled a bit to crisp the bacon. The bread was fresh-made from King Arthur flour, and the gravy was vibrant with pepper.

Mind fun

I've been treating myself lately to a set of lectures on tape.  At first I stuck with pure audio tapes, because they're so much faster to download, and until a few weeks ago, we were stuck with a HughesNet account that was subject to severe daily download limits.  Thirty-minute lectures are about 20MB, but a 30-video is more like 300MB.  Also, I wanted something to listen to while I did handwork, either crochet or painting a series of large signs I've taken on.

(Here's the picture part of the sign I've just done for the State Park, by the way.  That's what we call locally "The Big Tree," and a whooping crane.  You can listen to a lot of lectures while you paint all that detail, but of course long car trips are a good opportunity for listening, too.)

Anyway, how that we finally have a better internet connection, I broke down a ordered a handful of lectures that were available only in the video format.  The really critical images are few and far between, so I can still get my crochet work done, just stopping now and then to stare at the screen.  These are courses from "The Great Courses," and they're uniformly wonderful.  This week, though, I've stumbled on my favorite so far:  a series on how to solve mathematical puzzles.  The lecturer gives me the leap of joy I used to feel only in talking to my father.  He talks about an article  he read in an educational journal, which he admits is the only article in such a publication he ever managed to read from beginning to end (so right away he won my heart).  It described the experience of posing the same problem to a set of gifted kids and a bunch of kids on the vocational track:  how do you weigh a giraffe?

The gifted kids, the article said, were used to looking the answers up and pleasing their teacher.  They couldn't come up with an approach and quickly became anxious and discouraged.  One of the vocational kids suggested, "Let's get a chain saw and cut the giraffe up, then weigh the chunks."  The approach appealed to him, the lecturer said, because it's wrong, it's criminal, it's breaking all the rules.  The good news is, it's a metaphor for math puzzles, where there's nothing really wrong or criminal about breaking the rules.  In fact, "chainsawing the giraffe" is his new expression for the humdrum "thinking outside the box."  He lays great stress on mental tricks to avoid discouragement or anxiety, which will only tend to keep us in a mental rut.  Remember, he advises, that all of us are relatively stupid individually, because we weren't evolved to solve difficult mathematical problems.  Luckily, we're part of a civilization that can amass and transmit an enormous body of knowledge and technical skill, and we should steal ideas whenever possible -- giving credit where due, of course; he's not advocating plagiarism.

Here's one of his first puzzles.  A patient has to take one pill from Bottle A and another pill, identical in appearance, from Bottle B, every day.  Failure to take both pills is fatal, as is doubling up on either pill. The patient pours one pill out of Bottle A, but then carelessly pours two pills out of Bottle B while looking away for a moment.  Now he has three pills in his hand.  He knows that one is an A pill and two are B pills, but he can't tell by looking at them which is which.  How does he take the right dose for that day?  (Update:  And to make the problem harder for Grim:  if you don't take the entire course you'll die, and the pills aren't being made any more, so you can't just throw the three you've got away.)

A Good Translation

Thanks to Dad29's pointer, this feels right to me.

I have great wealth—a spear and a sword
and the good shield of animal hide, skin's protector;
for with this I plough, with this I reap,
with this I tread the sweet wine from the grape-vine,
with this I am named master of vassals.

Those who dare not wield a spear and a sword
and the good shield of animal hide, skin's protector:
all these men, falling around my knee,
worship me, calling me
master and great king.

He offers several other translations that have been given over the years, as well as the original Greek to compare, if you have the tongue yourself. 'Yeoman,' one says! Well, Sam Aylward, perhaps; but I think the concept is out of place even there.

"Vassal" is a little out of place, too, though there is a predecessor concept that is more applicable. Witness Homer, speaking of the warriors who were sworn to Achilles (from the Fitzgerald):

...Like wolves,
Carnivorous and fierce and tireless,
who rend a great stag on a mountainside,
and feed on him, their jaws reddened with blood,
loping in a pack to drink springwater,
their chops a-drip with fresh blood, their hearts
unshaken ever, and their bellies glutted:
such were the Myrmidons and their officers,
running to form up round Akhilleus' brave
companion-in-arms.

And like the god of war
among them was Akhilleus: he stood tall
and sped the chariots and shieldmen onward.

Even Fitzgerald is not quite right here. Ares is not properly "the god of war." He is rightly named: 'The god, War.'

I Did Not Know That

It is highly likely that, had the President not visited Iowa today, I would never have known that the airport code for Sioux City is SUX.

The FedEx lady brought us a new Hav-a-Hart trap just now in the supermegagigantanormous size.  The regular size worked for the first three days, yielding a small possum and two medium-sized raccoons.  Clearly, however, the mother-ship raccoon is big and smart enough to leave her butt in the door while grabbing the apples at the far end, then backing out, because we kept finding the trap in the morning with the bait gone and the trapdoor sprung, but no raccoon.  The new, longer trap should ensure that she goes all the way in before the door springs shut on her.

No raccoons are being harmed in the crafting of this weeklong drama.  We turn them loose in the state park, where they can torment campers.  We wouldn't even bother doing that if they'd learn some restraint:  they could wait until the fruit trees get fairly large, for instance, and then take some of the fruit, instead of climbing in the little saplings and breaking of all their branches, if not outright killing the trees.  They're cold, fish-eyed chicken murderers, too, showing no moderation in their destruction of the entire flock.

Raccoons are fiendishly smart.  Tonight we'll find out if Big-Butt Mama can say, "Hey, you hold the door open while I grab the apples."  Clever girl.

We're also ramping up into hummingbird season, with eight feeders that have to be changed more than once a day.  Soon we'll have 24 feeders up and still have to change them every few hours.  See, you can safely feed hummingbirds without their destroying anything.  They've got this human-interaction thing down.

Mr. Mazetti and the CIA

Just for the record, on the subject of the paper of record.

The so-called thought process

The Guardian is running a piece suggesting that the improved federal levee system protecting the city of New Orleans may have exacerbated problems downstream in Plaquemines Parish.  No one seems to have any data, so the story mostly quotes people speculating according to their own predilections:  the problem is those rich people upstream, who don't care about us down here, or the problem is that city folks are doing the usual dirty on the rurals, or the problem is that those uncoordinated local hicks refuse to get with the centrally planned federal system.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of building at or below sea level in one of the world's great deltas without going up on stilts, and then deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane.  On the news they were reporting that after landfall the authorities were just getting around to issuing a mandatory evacuation in affected areas.  That included the evacuation of a nursing home, if you can believe it.  Can you imagine waiting around for local officials to tell you to get out?  When you've got bedridden patients on your hands?  The ambulances couldn't even get in there by the time someone hit the panic button.  There were people interviewed on camera who couldn't swim.

A man, a plan

The five-point plan featured in Mr. Romney's acceptance speech tonight has one point I'm fuzzy about (the trade agreements) and four that are persuasive.  That is, they are within the reasonable competency of a Congress working with a White House, unlike, say, a plan to lower the oceans.  They are likely to produce the results claimed, unlike, say, quantitative easement and stimulus spending on public projects.  And they are unlikely to be attempted by the present administration.  i score that a win:

And unlike the president, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has 5 steps. 

First, by 2020, North America will be energy independent by taking full advantage of our oil and coal and gas and nuclear and renewables. 

Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. When it comes to the school your child will attend, every parent should have a choice, and every child should have a chance. 

Third, we will make trade work for America by forging new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences. 

Fourth, to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator that their investments in America will not vanish as have those in Greece, we will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget. 

And fifth, we will champion small businesses, America’s engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.