"Soldierfit," a workout plan based not on boot camp -- that's been done, and never very successfully -- but on the military life post boot camp. Assigning you an "NCO" to check on you every 30 days and chew you out for bad habits is probably somewhat effective, if you stay with the program.
Of course, it's a gimmick. You could always walk away, unlike the real military. Nevertheless, the structure probably would help a lot of people. One of the things I try to do for a few of my closest friends, not here on the internet but the ones I have in the physical world, is to keep in touch with them about their priorities and check on their progress regularly. Obviously I wouldn't impose myself if they did not wish it, but several of them have said that they like knowing they will have to account for their progress on a regular basis. It sometimes gives them that push to go to the gym, to write an extra chapter on their novel or dissertation, or whatever else they may be working on that is important to them.
That said, talking about what you're trying to do feels like accomplishing something -- and it's not, it's just talking. You have to hit that balance where what we are going to talk about is your accomplishment, so there'd better be one!
Baby steps in medicine
Twenty-five years ago there was great hope that advances in the understanding of the genetic underpinnings of cystic fibrosis heralded a cure in the near future. That early hope was dashed, but medical researchers keep making small, concrete advances, many of which can hugely open up the life of teenagers and young adults suffering from this disease. It may not be too long before we can refer to middle-aged people suffering from it. It was not so many years ago that only a lucky child could survive it to the age of six.
Umberto Eco on Charlie Brown
An unlikely review, recently made available by the New York Review of Books. (H/t: The Paris Review.)
His review is harmed, I think, by his omission of Marcie.
His review is harmed, I think, by his omission of Marcie.
Untapped Potential, or, the Rage of the Blank Slater
There's something Marxists, modern feminists, and militant atheists have in common...with each other but not with me. It ties back to the pernicious myth of the tabula rasa.
Nineteenth-century socialists, going back at least to Charles Fourier, sometimes had the notion that the human race, the whole of it, was full of enormous untapped potential...and that all it needed was the right arrangements (as envisioned by the socialists themselves) to unlock it, 'til they turned the seas to lemonade and freed the poles of ice (which in Fourier's mind was a good idea). The Leninist idea of the "New Communist Man" is the same idea...we could unlock this amazing, untapped potential, if only these wicked social arrangements (or the incomplete progress of the Revolution) weren't holding it back.[1] I think, if I believed that, I would have to be outraged at the abundance we were missing for no reason.
(I'm identifying the idea with blank-slatism, and it is tied to it, but Fourier wasn't a full-fledged blank-slater since he did believe in different human temperaments, and I remember one modest Marxist suggesting that the "New Men" after the Revolution wouldn't all have the same brilliance...just that the average would be "a Goethe, a Freud, or a Marx" while the geniuses would be beyond description. But the central conceit of huge potential, being held back by evil forces, was there.)
Reality is different. The human race has evolved rapidly in recent times, and the things we can do now are awe-inspiring...but intellectual ability is largely inherited, and not every person or every group of persons inherits the same amount. My own experience teaching doesn't suggest that each student's mind is just waiting to be molded to genius level. The idea of enormous untapped genius just waiting to be awakened all over the place doesn't make evolutionary sense, either. In denouncing wild claims about talking apes, Noam Chomsky managed to say something wise:
Limited brain power, with some men's far more limited than others', is not an arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race, but that will take hard work, and the day is not today.
So much for socialists and intellectual power; now on to modern feminism and pleasure. In 1928, Margaret Mead informed the world that it simply wasn't so, that she'd found a world in Samoa where girls could and did sleep around as much as possible...with no bad effects at all; in fact the society came off as peaceful and happy as a dream of Fourier. Her account wasn't quite that one-sided and her debunkers are said to have exaggerated too much as well...but the idea entered Western consciousness. And from that, I think, proceeds the feminist rage at "slut-shaming" or the stigmatizing of "sex work." If girls can really have it all, the desires of the moment and the deeper desires of their biology, why should anyone be telling them "no"? All we need is just a little conditioning, shouting down those dupes of the Patriarchy, and then we can live the life of this calypso song. Who wouldn't be outraged at all we'd been missing?
Reality is different. Her most trenchant critics may have exaggerated, but Mead was wrong (or "Not Even Wrong") about Samoa. From the dawn of history through the 1920's, I think almost all the human race understood there was something wrong with heavy promiscuity, especially for women.[2] These fine folks at the University of Virginia found that as the number of the wife's previous sexual entanglements goes up, the quality of the marriage goes down. (The correlation is much weaker for men; the marriage is less likely to be top-quality if he has a child by someone else, but the researchers didn't find a significant relation to his number of prior sex partners.) My own observation, and the customs of every people I've read about, suggest that a woman with a "past" becomes a less attractive as a potential wife...so that families worldwide would fight, kill, or even sue over a daughter's seduction. It's so widespread as to make me think it's hardwired into human nature. The Christians wouldn't be surprised that following the Commandments made the husband and wife happier, and even an observant secular (unseduced by Mead) might get the idea by reading about foreign cultures or watching the lives around him.[3]
The agonies of frustrated youth are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race. But that will take hard work, if it's worth doing at all, and the day is not today.
Looking at religion from the outside...there's not a one of them that'll convince you it's true by simple argument and evidence (I greatly disappointed one of my pals when the "miracle of Fatima" did not turn me to Catholicism). Religion gets hold of people at another level entirely. Read scriptures by "plain meaning" and you'll find the central parts vacuous or outright barbaric. (As Christians and Muslims sometimes do about each other's.) Joshua's conquest of Canaan at God's command -- complete with commands to slaughter and subjugate -- looks as false an excuse as the Hamas Charter's claim that Palestine is fiqh and meant for Muslims alone. Now the believers have provided millennia of commentary, and even the scriptures have passages that are far more beautiful and subtle, but if you don't believe them they look like layers of pearl on top of a very nasty core of grit--not the work of a divine being. If you think a religion is just a set of factual propositions that people are convinced of, then religion in general, or at least the one you like least, looks like a simple con-job if not a demon's creed. How amazing that so many millions could fall for this...and how superior you must be to have seen through it. How tempting to end up like John Derbyshire's atheist father...watching the crowds at St. Peter's on television, and yelling at the screen, "You bloody fools!"
Reality is different. You no more comprehend a religion from reading its scriptures and apologetics than you comprehend marriage by reading your state's case law on the subject. Chances are, if you're an unbeliever, you're just missing an instinct your fellowman has...and as I commented here, that gives you little reason to be smug. I only tried the Book of Mormon once--I was really stunned that an intelligent person could think it was for real--but I have known too many intelligent Mormons (and liked every single one I've met, plus the one who writes my favorite webcomic, not to mention that extremely decent fellow I voted for the year before last) to dream I'm so far their superior.
The absurdities of religion (or, if you're religious, the absurdities of the other fellow's religion) are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society. It's not arbitrary even if it's obviously wrong, because it's feeding a real human need. The content can change, and maybe in a way that's better for the human race, but that takes time and agony. (some people can scratch their religious itch without believing the contents of any faith, but it's uncommon, and most quite understandably feel no need to leave the faith they've already got). The churches and mosques of the world are not crammed with "bloody fools" just waiting for, or else unable to understand, the five-minute explanation that'll turn them away once and for all.
Blank-slate ideas about plastic human nature lead to fantasies of abundant untapped potential. They lead also to the idea that our greatest frustrations can be talked or trained away, and from both places they lead to pointless rage.
[1] This is doubtless why the so-called "definitive answer" to The Book of Soul Destroying Blasphemy, by Abdul al-Hazred and the Foul Fiend Flibbertigibbet, is by an red-diaper Marxist (with, apparently, no more than Marx's level of commitment to accuracy when reporting the writings of others).
[2] Common sense suggests that men who get around too much are lacking something...like self-control and judgment...that makes for a good husband (there's also a remark here that compulsive womanizers, like drunks and heavy gamblers, proved likelier to break in the stress of battle). I do not think anyone should be brought up to sleep around freely, but I am talking about instinctive, emotional consequences here...and as far as I can tell these are not made equal between the two sexes, but fall harder on women.
[3] A few oddball thinkers (Fourier among them) had the idea that sexual frustration was unnecessary, and the right social arrangements could eliminate it. (I wonder if the Utilitarian Utopia of Brave New World -- where "everyone belongs to everyone else" -- was inspired by him.) But as far as I can tell they really were odd, and seen as such.
Nineteenth-century socialists, going back at least to Charles Fourier, sometimes had the notion that the human race, the whole of it, was full of enormous untapped potential...and that all it needed was the right arrangements (as envisioned by the socialists themselves) to unlock it, 'til they turned the seas to lemonade and freed the poles of ice (which in Fourier's mind was a good idea). The Leninist idea of the "New Communist Man" is the same idea...we could unlock this amazing, untapped potential, if only these wicked social arrangements (or the incomplete progress of the Revolution) weren't holding it back.[1] I think, if I believed that, I would have to be outraged at the abundance we were missing for no reason.
(I'm identifying the idea with blank-slatism, and it is tied to it, but Fourier wasn't a full-fledged blank-slater since he did believe in different human temperaments, and I remember one modest Marxist suggesting that the "New Men" after the Revolution wouldn't all have the same brilliance...just that the average would be "a Goethe, a Freud, or a Marx" while the geniuses would be beyond description. But the central conceit of huge potential, being held back by evil forces, was there.)
Reality is different. The human race has evolved rapidly in recent times, and the things we can do now are awe-inspiring...but intellectual ability is largely inherited, and not every person or every group of persons inherits the same amount. My own experience teaching doesn't suggest that each student's mind is just waiting to be molded to genius level. The idea of enormous untapped genius just waiting to be awakened all over the place doesn't make evolutionary sense, either. In denouncing wild claims about talking apes, Noam Chomsky managed to say something wise:
It's about as likely that an ape will prove to have a language ability as that there is an island somewhere with a species of flightless birds waiting for human beings to teach them to fly.Give a prize to that villain. The human brain as it is costs a lot of energy to maintain; humans, like other creatures, evolved in a world where getting enough to eat was a real challenge; maintaining a massive store of brainpower they weren't even using would be an evolutionary absurdity, even without the idea that Man was waiting for a bunch of socialists to teach them to use it.
Limited brain power, with some men's far more limited than others', is not an arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race, but that will take hard work, and the day is not today.
So much for socialists and intellectual power; now on to modern feminism and pleasure. In 1928, Margaret Mead informed the world that it simply wasn't so, that she'd found a world in Samoa where girls could and did sleep around as much as possible...with no bad effects at all; in fact the society came off as peaceful and happy as a dream of Fourier. Her account wasn't quite that one-sided and her debunkers are said to have exaggerated too much as well...but the idea entered Western consciousness. And from that, I think, proceeds the feminist rage at "slut-shaming" or the stigmatizing of "sex work." If girls can really have it all, the desires of the moment and the deeper desires of their biology, why should anyone be telling them "no"? All we need is just a little conditioning, shouting down those dupes of the Patriarchy, and then we can live the life of this calypso song. Who wouldn't be outraged at all we'd been missing?
Reality is different. Her most trenchant critics may have exaggerated, but Mead was wrong (or "Not Even Wrong") about Samoa. From the dawn of history through the 1920's, I think almost all the human race understood there was something wrong with heavy promiscuity, especially for women.[2] These fine folks at the University of Virginia found that as the number of the wife's previous sexual entanglements goes up, the quality of the marriage goes down. (The correlation is much weaker for men; the marriage is less likely to be top-quality if he has a child by someone else, but the researchers didn't find a significant relation to his number of prior sex partners.) My own observation, and the customs of every people I've read about, suggest that a woman with a "past" becomes a less attractive as a potential wife...so that families worldwide would fight, kill, or even sue over a daughter's seduction. It's so widespread as to make me think it's hardwired into human nature. The Christians wouldn't be surprised that following the Commandments made the husband and wife happier, and even an observant secular (unseduced by Mead) might get the idea by reading about foreign cultures or watching the lives around him.[3]
The agonies of frustrated youth are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society, but an inescapable reality...it might someday be changed if we can re-engineer the human race. But that will take hard work, if it's worth doing at all, and the day is not today.
Looking at religion from the outside...there's not a one of them that'll convince you it's true by simple argument and evidence (I greatly disappointed one of my pals when the "miracle of Fatima" did not turn me to Catholicism). Religion gets hold of people at another level entirely. Read scriptures by "plain meaning" and you'll find the central parts vacuous or outright barbaric. (As Christians and Muslims sometimes do about each other's.) Joshua's conquest of Canaan at God's command -- complete with commands to slaughter and subjugate -- looks as false an excuse as the Hamas Charter's claim that Palestine is fiqh and meant for Muslims alone. Now the believers have provided millennia of commentary, and even the scriptures have passages that are far more beautiful and subtle, but if you don't believe them they look like layers of pearl on top of a very nasty core of grit--not the work of a divine being. If you think a religion is just a set of factual propositions that people are convinced of, then religion in general, or at least the one you like least, looks like a simple con-job if not a demon's creed. How amazing that so many millions could fall for this...and how superior you must be to have seen through it. How tempting to end up like John Derbyshire's atheist father...watching the crowds at St. Peter's on television, and yelling at the screen, "You bloody fools!"
Reality is different. You no more comprehend a religion from reading its scriptures and apologetics than you comprehend marriage by reading your state's case law on the subject. Chances are, if you're an unbeliever, you're just missing an instinct your fellowman has...and as I commented here, that gives you little reason to be smug. I only tried the Book of Mormon once--I was really stunned that an intelligent person could think it was for real--but I have known too many intelligent Mormons (and liked every single one I've met, plus the one who writes my favorite webcomic, not to mention that extremely decent fellow I voted for the year before last) to dream I'm so far their superior.
The absurdities of religion (or, if you're religious, the absurdities of the other fellow's religion) are not the arbitrary imposition of a wicked society. It's not arbitrary even if it's obviously wrong, because it's feeding a real human need. The content can change, and maybe in a way that's better for the human race, but that takes time and agony. (some people can scratch their religious itch without believing the contents of any faith, but it's uncommon, and most quite understandably feel no need to leave the faith they've already got). The churches and mosques of the world are not crammed with "bloody fools" just waiting for, or else unable to understand, the five-minute explanation that'll turn them away once and for all.
Blank-slate ideas about plastic human nature lead to fantasies of abundant untapped potential. They lead also to the idea that our greatest frustrations can be talked or trained away, and from both places they lead to pointless rage.
[1] This is doubtless why the so-called "definitive answer" to The Book of Soul Destroying Blasphemy, by Abdul al-Hazred and the Foul Fiend Flibbertigibbet, is by an red-diaper Marxist (with, apparently, no more than Marx's level of commitment to accuracy when reporting the writings of others).
[2] Common sense suggests that men who get around too much are lacking something...like self-control and judgment...that makes for a good husband (there's also a remark here that compulsive womanizers, like drunks and heavy gamblers, proved likelier to break in the stress of battle). I do not think anyone should be brought up to sleep around freely, but I am talking about instinctive, emotional consequences here...and as far as I can tell these are not made equal between the two sexes, but fall harder on women.
[3] A few oddball thinkers (Fourier among them) had the idea that sexual frustration was unnecessary, and the right social arrangements could eliminate it. (I wonder if the Utilitarian Utopia of Brave New World -- where "everyone belongs to everyone else" -- was inspired by him.) But as far as I can tell they really were odd, and seen as such.
Department of Missing the Point
You can't blame a mother of a fallen son, in a way. Poor boy loved speed, he wasn't to blame. If only the driver had been looking further down the road, before he made that turn.
He was going 97 miles an hour at the time of the accident. I've gone faster than 115, through traffic, on a bridge where motion was constrained. If I'd have been killed doing it, no one but me was to blame.
Catechism 2290: "Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others' safety on the road, at sea, or in the air." I've made my own confession on this point, I'm not too proud to admit.
He was going 97 miles an hour at the time of the accident. I've gone faster than 115, through traffic, on a bridge where motion was constrained. If I'd have been killed doing it, no one but me was to blame.
Catechism 2290: "Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others' safety on the road, at sea, or in the air." I've made my own confession on this point, I'm not too proud to admit.
You Can't Stay Here
I'm at a conference in a wicked city. Mrs. W. is visiting #2 Stepson in a wickeder one. Here's a song about how decent men behave at times like this.
"The rhyme's not rich, the style is crude and rough" - but I wish there were more such songs.
"The rhyme's not rich, the style is crude and rough" - but I wish there were more such songs.
Malthus was a chump
From "The Age of Global Warming," about Malthus's 1798 prediction that the human population would grow exponentially while the food supply would grow only arithmetically:
Plants and animals, including humans, convert carbohydrate to hydrocarbons (fatty acids) to store energy efficiently. In using fossil fuels, mankind unlocked a store of energy used by plants and animal[s] [that had been accumulating for hundreds of millions of years] and, from the time of the Industrial Revolution, started to apply it on an industrial scale.
By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain was becoming the world's first industrialised econom. The Promethean Revolution was underway.
If Bacon was the prophet of man's material liberation through the advance of science and technology, Malthus was its Jeremiah--prophesying that mankind's future was to be trapped in an agrarian past which the Promethean Revolution was already making history.
If ever there was an inflection point in the economic hisotry of mankind, this was it. It was a spectacularly inapposite moment to the be writing a treatise on economic development and population based on the assumption of the static technological endowment of pre-industrial societies when industrialisation was taking mankind out of the Malthusian trap.A little over 200 years later, it turns out that the food supply is capable of growing geometrically, while mankind with access to birth control nearly stops growing at all.
An Interview with Farage
A name likely to become more familiar to Americans, Nigel Farage leads the UK Independence Party.
Adams: You’ve seen the comments by the government that they were going to withdraw the passports of folks in ISIS who are Brits . . .UPDATE: It's a trap!
Farage: . . . That’s not what they said at all. They said they’d like to do something. I said two weeks ago, we don’t want these guys back in Britain. Once again, Cameron just mirrors everything I say because he realizes the public agree with me. He worded it beautifully, he’s brilliant. He said he would like to take away their passports, knowing full well that the European Court of Human Rights won’t let us do it.
More Shorts from the War on Thinking Things Through
The Economist has published and instantly withdrawn a review of a book on slavery. Those who remember our reparations discussion will understand that I am sympathetic to the claims of the book about the facts, which the Economist panned as "advocacy" because "[a]lmost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains." Still, what we just witnessed was not a debate about the accuracy of the facts, nor even the accuracy of the portrayal of the people as victims or villains. A 'debate' of this brevity is a shouting-down of an unwelcome viewpoint, not a discussion of its merits.
Meanwhile in England, a woman is beheaded in her garden:
Meanwhile in England, a woman is beheaded in her garden:
Some residents claimed last night that the suspect was a local man who had converted to Islam last year, but those claims could not be verified. Detectives said they had ruled out terrorism.Detectives are quick with that conclusion, it seems to me. It may be a one-man act of terror, or it may be a crazy with a machete. But wouldn't you like, in the interest of knowing the truth of why the victim was murdered, to take a day or two to investigate before you rule things out?
"A Forecast of When We Will Run Out of Each Metal"
Not really that, of course, as the author makes clear.
Still, it's the kind of exercise that xkcd would have enjoyed putting together -- only without the clever ALT text.
In my opinion, there are two caveats that are always worth considering when looking at something like this.In a sense every economic good is limited, more-or-less scarce. On the other hand, many things can substitute for one another: perhaps organic carbon for the kind of metallic wire we have used to conduct electricity for so long.
1. “Reserves” are an engineering number that are based on economic viability. Technically speaking, there are small concentrations of gold everywhere. It is just not usually viable to mine 0.1 g/t gold. When we will “run out” of each mineral in this chart is based on current reserves and prices. If the gold price doubles, then suddenly it is economic to mine more.
2. This chart is a reminder that something has to give. Either prices are going to have to go up, or new amazing discoveries have to be made to keep prices down. It’s basic economics, and either way it seems that there are many opportunities in the mining industry for investors and speculators on both fronts.
Still, it's the kind of exercise that xkcd would have enjoyed putting together -- only without the clever ALT text.
Hm, Where's That Bible?
Our Secretary of State has apparently decided the right way to persuade Muslim countries is by quoting the Bible. Well, not quoting:
"Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid out in Scriptures clearly, beginning in Genesis. And Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable. Our response to this challenge ought to be rooted in a sense of stewardship of Earth, and for me and for many of us here today, that responsibility comes from God,” he continued.So, where was it that God puts humankind in charge of the "climate"? I assume he's thinking of Genesis 1, where we get the general authorities. But they don't include hegemony over the skies, the seas, or anything like the weather.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.In fact, in the Book of Job, the absence of these powers are among the reasons God uses to draw Job's attention to his lack of wisdom and power.
27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food:
30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so.
8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb;If you're old enough to remember 2008, you know who thought he would have the power to bid the oceans cease to rise: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further!"
9 When I made clouds the garment thereof, And thick darkness a swaddling-band for it,
10 And marked out for it my bound, And set bars and doors,
11 And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; And here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
34 Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover thee?Well, canst thou, John Kerry?
35 Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go, And say unto thee, Here we are?
Nothing I'd Hoped To See
The Archbishop of Canterbury has compared the genocide against Christians in ISIS-controlled territory to the Holocaust. Normally the way Holocaust comparisons go is that they are ridiculously overblown, and thus cause tremendous offense. This time, there really is a genocidal slaughter aimed at wiping out a religious minority, whose homes are being marked with a special sign in a kind of reverse-Passover to justify their plunder.
It is, in other words, a perfectly appropriate comparison for describing the conditions of our own day and time.
It is, in other words, a perfectly appropriate comparison for describing the conditions of our own day and time.
Rotherham
The Anchoress writes.
They sent a check to pay for replacements.
UPDATE: Steyn:
What Rotherham puts me in mind of is the behavior of the conqueror. One of the terrible after-effects of invasion and war has been the subjugation of the women, the rape of wives and daughters, the seed of the conqueror, inserted into a culture and a society — yet another tactic meant to subdue and eradicate.The hardest part of this story, for me, was reading about the girl who saved up the clothes she'd been raped in for a very long time at the back of her closet. She finally got the courage to tell her family, who took the clothes and turned them into the police. The police took away the bags, and then came back and said they'd lost them. All of them.
And yet, there has been no old-fashioned “invasion” and no “war” in the southern part of Yorkshire. This conquering was invited, and it was invited throughout Europe, where Rotherham will be discovered to have been replicated. Why wouldn’t it be? Who in Europe would dare to prosecute?
Rotherham will not be the last “conquest”. There are radical Islamists — not “observant” mind you, just radical — living in the West and determinedly unassimilated to it, on every continent.
Earlier today I read about three churches in Columbus graffiti’d with the word “Infidels”.
They sent a check to pay for replacements.
UPDATE: Steyn:
So the individuals who presided over this regime destroyed the lives of 1,400 people in their care, and have paid no price for it. Indeed, some have been promoted, and put in charge of even more children.Have you no rope in England?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)