"If I had Bill Gates's resources . . . ."

Via Assistant Village Idiot, a hilarious article about Bill Gates's failure to measure up to rarified standards of philanthropy.  Apparently he saves millions of lives with his own money, but his progressive principles are lacking.  Even more hilarious comments.  "Well, if someone gave me his money, I'd be even more idealistically generous!"

Éirinn go Brách

"Ireland forever." Should I be wearing orange today?  I fear my ancestors were confirmed Ulstermen, nothing like romantic Irish revolutionaries.  I turned to the internet this morning to find out what and how I should be celebrating.  It informs me that "Éirinn go Brách," or rather the Anglicized "Erin go bragh," showed up on the flag of some deserting Americans, including Irishmen, who went over the Mexican side in the Mexican-American War, calling themselves Los San Patricios, or St. Patrick's Batallion. Always on the losing side of history, poor fellows, which explains the humorous translation of "It's Irish for you're f**cked."

The Wiki entry also clears up a long-term mystery about crossword puzzle clues, which may be asking for either "Erin" or "Eire" in referring to the Ould Sod. It seems that Eire is nominative, but the dative form "Erin" is used colloquially even as the subject of a sentence. Back to the proper method of celebrating today. I can remember singing "The Wearing of the Green" in elementary school, back when there was music in elementary school and traditional songs of this sort could be sung without spurring a federal investigation. I understand Lenten restrictions are lifted for the day, which encourages alcohol consumption. An Irish Member of Parliament introduced legislation to close the bars on March 17 to prevent drinking from getting out of hand, a measure that must have been inspired by some truly legendary drinking in order to have excited comment in Ireland.

All in all, I don't find any trace of North-vs.-South tension in the traditional acknowledgements of the day, so I feel free to pull out my tin whistles, wear green, and listen to this:

 

Happy St. Patty's Day!

The Deer's Cry

St. Patrick's Day is not what many think it is, but it is a good day.

The way models make us feel is the important thing

From Maggie's Farm, a memoir of World War II:

“Some of my colleagues had the responsibility of preparing long-range weather forecasts, i.e., for the following month,” Arrow wrote.  “The statisticians among us subjected these forecasts to verification and found they differed in no way from chance.” 

Alarmed, Arrow and his colleagues tried to bring this important discovery to the attention of the commanding officer.  At last the word came down from a high-ranking aide. 

“The Commanding General is well aware that the forecasts are no good,” the aide said haughtily.  “However, he needs them for planning purposes.”

Suckers

Looking past the secular piety in this NYT article on Ukraine and game theory, a lesson:

[A]fter the Soviet Union split into many pieces in the 1990s, a newly independent Ukraine gave up its portion of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal. In part, it did so in exchange for a memorandum supporting its territorial integrity, signed by both Russia and the United States.

Eliminating its nuclear weapons may have seemed a good deal for Ukraine at the time, and it can be argued that the world became a safer place. Yet if Ukraine were a nuclear power today, it would surely have a far greater ability to deter Russian military action.

Those who beat their swords into plowshares will eventually be enslaved by those who kept their swords.

Coal Country Just Says "No"

You can push people only so far, and then they may start examining deeply held assumptions about who's on the side of the angels after all.  The 7th most senior member of the House is polling badly against a Republican challenger in West Virginia.

There's the usual attempt to blame shadowy billionaires from New York.  Those Koch brothers are behind everything.  My own sister sends me emails complaining about them.  She thinks they're behind an initiative to destroy the union she works for--by eliminating the union's right to collect dues from people who'd rather not join.  It's a subject I've learned not to discuss with her, beyond reassuring her that the Pennsylvania initiative she's worried about doesn't appear to be getting any traction.  Let people make a free decision whether to join a union?  That's crazy talk.

"Four."

A little girl explains why her mother is the best of mothers.



Via my father, for reasons best known to him.

ST II-II Q 158 S.C., CO.

Phil at Brandywine Books links to a piece on the decline of religious liberty, which warns Christians to ponder the beam in their eye.

I suspect that within my lifetime American Christians, at least those who hold traditional theological and more views, will be faced with a number of situations in which they will have to choose between compromising their consciences and civil disobedience. In such a situation there are multiple temptations. The most obvious is to silence the voice of conscience in order to get along. But there are also the temptations of responding in anger, in resentment, in bitterness, in vengeance. It might be a good exercise in self-examination for each of us to figure out which temptation is most likely for us.

I think the temptation for me is to anger. But I consult the wise, and find that anger is not always a sin.

On the contrary, Chrysostom [Hom. xi in the Opus Imperfectum, falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] says: "He that is angry without cause, shall be in danger; but he that is angry with cause, shall not be in danger: for without anger, teaching will be useless, judgments unstable, crimes unchecked." Therefore to be angry is not always an evil....

[E]vil may be found in anger, when, to wit, one is angry, more or less than right reason demands. But if one is angry in accordance with right reason, one's anger is deserving of praise.

Hobbit doors

"Never make anything simple and efficient if a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful."

One man

Hal Douglas, who narrated a big chunk of all the movie trailers you've ever watched, died recently at the age of 89.  Here he is in a trailer for a Jerry Seinfeld movie, playing a guy who narrates movie trailers.  I understand the movie didn't do that well, but the trailer has been watched on YouTube over 700,000 times.

Monopoly German-style

As it would be played by Freud, Marx, Carnap, and Nietszche.

Win with Obamacare

The New Republic has the real scoop on the effect of Obamacare on the Democrats' recent loss of a special election in Florida.   It was not, as the conventional wisdom suggests, a question of popular revulsion against Obamacare taking down a well-known and well-funded Democrat.  The real problem is that Chief Justice Roberts struck a more deadly blow than we knew when he prevented the feds from bullying the states into taking on an expensive expansion of Medicaid.  Many voters below 138% of the poverty line now find themselves ineligible both for Medicaid and for subsidized Obamacare exchange policies, which is--you guessed it--the Republicans' fault.  So all Democrats have to do is explain this, and reap a zillion grateful votes in November.

You may not have noticed that the President waffled on another promise this week (who can keep track?), concerning your ability to keep your doctor. What he meant to say, and what we were too dumb to understand, is that you would have to give up your doctor in order to save money on your new, much higher premiums.

 

Friday Night AMV

Her Kung-fu is pretty good.

Interestingly, this is a US written and produced show for Nickelodeon.

What you sound like to foreigners

This woman is a good mimic.  You have to wait through her impressions of several languages before she gets to UK English and then to American English, but they're both convincing despite being gibberish.

It Is Very Important To Let Yourself Love Only Women Of Character

For example, the kind of stand-up girls who will confess to dad that you were invited into their bedroom at 2:20 AM.

Nonsense, Its Arcane and Irrelevant

I suppose I ought to be surprised to find myself in agreement with NPR, but I suppose it can happen now and again.

Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was tortuously secured by complex argument becomes widely shared by intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. We don't see it, because we see with it.

Unfortunately, that also goes for philosophical error.

A Psychologist Diagnoses Humanity

Inventing a new and universal mental disorder -- 'juvenioa' -- out of whole cloth, psychologist Chris Ferguson writes:

Every generation believes that the generation before was too rigid and conservative—and the generation after too wild and out-of-control.

Speaking as a member of the generation after the Baby Boom, let me assure you that this generalization does not hold true. Any criticisms I would field toward nearby generations are, if anything, wholly reversed -- except that the 'rigidity' exhibited by the Millenials tends to be left-leaning rather than 'conservative.'

Insofar as it is useful to criticize a 'generation,' that is. There were, and are, lots of good folks in both.

The blueberry in the tomato soup

It's too bad Rick Perry crashed and burned in the last presidential election cycle, because he's a solid guy.  I enjoyed his interview with Jimmy Kimmel at Austin's SXSW festival, where he shrugged off boos from the crowd by observing that Austin was "the blueberry in the tomato soup" of Texas.  Kimmel asked him about reports that he'd shot a coyote while jogging.  "You carry a gun while you're jogging?" he asked, amazed.  "I carry a gun to interviews," Perry replied.

It's probably hard to imagine, if you don't live in one of Texas's larger cities, how utterly the polite classes here loathe the Governor.  "Governor Good-Hair," they usually call him, appalled by the bad name he gives to the state.  He does have pretty good hair.

Backpacking

I'm getting ready for a 5-day, 50 mile hike on the AT early next month. One of the irritating things about the AT authorities is that they do not permit open fires anywhere on the trail. As a result, you have to either haul a stove (or some alternative heat source), or do without.

This time I'm thinking of doing without, but I need to figure out good meals with plenty of calories, protein, and carbs, but which never need to be heated. Obviously sealed, hard-cured sausages and nuts are good protein sources. I could take pre-baked cakes of various kinds (perhaps aiming for something like lembas), as long as they were baked hard enough that they won't go bad over a few days. Dried fruits, maybe.

Actually, on reflection, maybe I should just go back through the Hobbit and Fellowship of the Rings to see what they are given at their various waystations. Tolkien seems to have known a lot about trekking.

Do any of you have suggestions?