Herodotus

Whatever bad things anyone has said about Herodotus -- aye, even Aristotle -- the histories he wrote are among the most interesting things you will ever read. Yet among scholars he has a respect he didn't used to enjoy:

Cicero called Herodotus the “father of history.” Yet Arnaldo Momigliano, the great 20th-century historiographer of the ancient world, ends his brilliant essay on Herodotus by noting, “It is a strange truth that Herodotus has really become the father of history only in modern times.” History, or, more precisely, historical methods, Momigliano explains, finally caught up with Herodotus. Ethnographic research brought a new respect for Herodotus’ own early interest in ethnography. Those who did archaeological exploration in Egypt and Mesopotamia found Herodotus’ writings on these subjects useful. His writings also became valuable to biblical scholars in their study of Oriental history. Oral history, on which he drew heavily, became a standard tool of modern social science and history. Herodotus was also the first serious historian to give due attention to women. In his Histories, he devotes several pages to Artemisia, the queen of Halicarnassus, who commanded the Asian Dorian fleet during Xerxes’ attack on Greece. As for his accuracy, Momigliano writes, “We have now collected enough evidence to be able to say that he can be trusted.”

Well, it's not a one-off thing; Herodotus writes about the women of almost every civilization he discusses. And I say "almost" only because I don't want to go back through a long and detailed book to make sure it's fully 100% of them; but I can't recall one where he didn't.

Herodotus’ philosophy arises out of the plentitude of his details. This philosophy holds men to be perpetually in peril of overstepping their bounds—bounds set by good sense and reinforced by the gods. Those who do not understand this go under. But even those who understand may not necessarily come to a good end. Herodotus provides story after story proving that human justice is not the first order of the gods.

So it seems.

Doorbells

Megan McArdle posted about the California law requiring affirmative consent for sexual encounters. She objected to the strange tone of a Jezebel post responding to an argument that intrusive consent requirements might ruin sex, where I found this interesting comment:

Funny how I've never had anyone tell me that doorbells have ruined inviting friends over.

Clever, but I'm not convinced it works. Doorbells are for strangers, aren't they?--or for friends who are being at least a bit formal. Is that a good model for lovers, or should we assume that communication in that context is a lot more tacit?

I expect friends to drop by unannounced sometimes.  They know they can count on me to speak up if there's some reason they can't come in.  Don't we expect a lover to make a few presumptions, too, as long as he keeps his eyes and ears open for our response, which won't always be signed, sealed, and notarized?  There are always people who can't take a hint, and you gradually ease them out of your life, without making a federal case out of it.

Card-carrying non-infidels

ISIS is issuing certificates, good for three months, showing that persons unlucky enough to be caught in their territory are provisionally considered non-infidels:

To whom it may concern,

We hereby notify you that the one named Na’il Salu bin Basaam of the people of the al-Raqa emirate took and satisfactorily passed a course on Repentance.

Based on this, we hereby grant him this certificate confirming that he is not an infidel [kafir] and that it is impermissible to lash, crucify, or rape him, unless a legitimate reason arises for the soldiers of the caliphate or if it’s been established that he has returned to apostasy and wants his freedom.

That's almost as bad as requiring a voter i.d., which is just like a poll tax.

A & ~A: It's the Law

News from the Pacific Northwest:

Two competing measures on the Washington state ballot this fall ask voters to take a stance on expanded background checks for gun sales. One is seeking universal checks for all sales and transfers, including private transactions. The other would prevent any such expansion... What happens if both pass on Nov. 4 is anyone's guess, though the Washington secretary of state's office has said that either the Legislature or the courts would have to sort it out.

Well, the Legislature could sort it out by passing a new law that superseded both measures. How would a court sort it out, though? It's a logical contradiction, passed by majorities of voters in the same way at the same time via the same method. The stronger majority wins? Both laws are null and void?

Restless urges

U.S. oil producers have begun to export their product for the first time in almost 40 years, and imports are dropping.  (The two don't match exactly, because there are different levels of crude with different markets, much of the variance having to do with what product our expensive refineries were designed to handle.)

The current administration is uneasily going along with an export-restriction loophole for now.  As usual, politicians can't decide whether the problem is that resulting fuel prices will be too high or too low, but they're gearing up to interfere somehow, once the midterms are over.  For one thing, if you let people sell their product, they'll just frack more, and we can't have that.

Snooping through Private Things

Samuel Beckett was very clear on the subject of whether he wanted his letters published after his death. Most of them were to a lover, and in addition to being private, were on the subjects he thought divorced from his art.

Writing in January 1958 to his American publisher Barney Rosset, he declared, “I dislike the ventilation of private documents. These throw no light on my work,” and the next day, to the theatre director and long-time Beckett collaborator Alan Schneider, “I do not like publication of letters.”

In the last days of his life, under pressure from many whose meal ticket depended in part on having continued material from him to publish (or analyze, in the case of the academics), he relented -- a little. He agreed that only those letters that had bearing on his work might be published for study.

So, of course:

Surely there is nothing in a writer’s life or letters that does not have a bearing on his work, as life and work inextricably commingle.

This problem was more acute in the first two volumes. In the period of his life that they covered, from 1929 to 1956, Beckett was virtually unknown to the public, and the majority of his letters were, inevitably, personal. However, the thing was managed, and those first two volumes are substantial indeed, and seem destined to be the most interesting of the projected four.

The first two volumes! Irrelevant, private material now published in two thick, academic volumes for your pleasant consideration in direct violation of the author's wishes -- even that small exception extorted at his deathbed.

Honor is without price.

The special burden of being me

Gwynneth Paltrow explains how the lack of a routine in her life made it unusually hard to hold her marriage together.

New wine in old skins

Richard Fernandez on paradigm shifts:

But Obama’s not without ideas. He’s full of ideas, all of them out of date. All of them from the last century’s paradigms. He wanted to become like European social democracy at the very moment when it finally collapsed into the dust-bin of history. He hankered after the ideals of ‘progressivism’ when it had already become reactionary. He is like a man who has saved all his life to buy a pair of bell-bottomed pants only to reach the required sum just when they were 40 years out of style. He’s at the store looking to buy them and can’t find them on the rack.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

Hope Ya'll Have Enjoyed Georgia's Excellent Season...

...because it's apparently over.

If this guy had just asked around campus, people would have given him $400. Heck, season he's had, some of them would have given him $400 each.

UPDATE:  After a convincing 34-0 win, I suppose the winning season is not completely over.

Riding in the Rain

Good ride today. Dodged the thunderheads as well as I could, as long as I could, but rode back in it. It's a good idea to stay out of the stuff because it isn't safe, but it is invigorating.



It's a good time of year. The firewood was laid in during the summer, and needs no more attention until it's time to start bringing it in during the cold. Need to clear some weeds now that the cool weather will slow them growing back, weed-and-seed that pasture. Clear the gutters, a few other tasks, but mostly the autumn season is relaxing. It is full of beautiful days, when there's 'no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar.'

What do women want?

If they're female voters in Kentucky, and they're interested in a functioning economy, it turns out they may want a candidate who's not anti-coal, even if she's a card-carrying member of the no-war-on-women party:

Simply having the correct set of genitals does not mean that one is going to fall in line with the predicted talking points of the day. The women voters of Kentucky seem to have more on their minds than just how much contraception costs. They have families to raise and bills to pay like anyone else. When the Democrats run a candidate who is anti-coal and so many jobs in the local economy depend on that industry, that resonates more than hours of glam commercials. Bluegrass values tend to be fairly old school, and I’m guessing that a lot of these Southern Belles don’t spend their days glued to the latest talking points from Debbie Wassermann-Schultz.

Maybe … just maybe … you have to really talk to – and listen to – the voters and look beyond their gender, their skin color or which church they attend. What a novel concept.

Where y'all from?

This is a dialect quiz from a year or so ago.  It places me somewhere between Jackson, Mississippi, and my actual hometown, Houston.  I tried to choose the answers that seemed most natural from my childhood, though sometimes two answers seemed equally valid, perhaps from listening to other people's conversation over the years.  For instance, I'm pretty sure we said "pillbug" at home, but "doodlebug" seems right, too.  I might call an 18-wheeler a semi or a tractor-trailer, interchangeably.  I was taught to say "feeder road," but I also say "frontage road."  I say "crawfish" and "crawdad" without much preference.  I say "cray-ahn" and can't remember ever hearing anyone say anything different.  I say "cair-ah-mel" not "car-mel." For "aunt," I say "ant," not "awwwnt."  Do people really say "loy-yer" instead of "law-yer"?  Yankees, please advise.

A Silly Question

Cass was schooling me on the equal protection clause recently and a random, silly question popped into my squirrelly brain.

First, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And now, the silly question:

Tangentially, if we apply the equal protection clause as it's written, doesn't it eliminate any limits on marriage or age or ability? Polygamy should certainly be allowed for every reason same-sex marriage is, but not only that, what about all the age discrimination?

Wouldn't any drinking age above 18 be unconstitutional under this clause? Clearly, we are depriving citizens of a privilege w/o due process of law. Could we even have a legal age of majority at all? Are 2-year-olds not citizens?

Just thinking out loud. Anyone know?

I should have said, "... as it's written and the courts have interpreted it" given that the courts have interpreted it to preclude state bans on same-sex marriage.

Yeah, I fully expect to get slapped, but hopefully it will be an educational slap.

In Honor of Cass' Repost...

...of an old discussion, with new discussion.

Let's Talk about Government Control of Our Bodies

So there I was, trying to slip an argument in on another thread, when the Big Guy busts me and tells me to put up my own post. Well, clearly I'm not pulling my blogging weight around here lately, but I thought I could slide by one more time. Dang.

Without further introduction or transition, over in the Lies, Damned Lies, and Abortion thread, Cass and Grim got into a discussion of government control over a woman's body in the case of pregnancy.

The pro-choice / pro-life debate is an active one, so we hear about it and about a woman's right to control her body. However, in the context of government control over the body, we don't hear much about conscription, probably because we haven't conscripted for about 40 years, though also probably because it's about men's rights and that's just evil and misogynistic.

Hater that I am, I'm curious about how the Hall sees this. Are these two issues similar in any way? If you are uncomfortable with any level of government control over a pregnant woman's body, are you also uncomfortable with government control over a man's body? Or are they completely different matters?

There Are Ways To Defy An Order Short of Disobeying It

For example, conduct honest and dispassionate tests.

Faced with a January 2016 deadline for introducing women to combat units, the U.S. Marines have discovered that for every man who fails a simulated artillery lift-and-carry test, 28 women fail.

And for a test simulating moving over a seven-foot high wall, less than 1.2 percent of the men could not get over, compared to 21.32 percent of women.

The results were found in Marine Corps documentation by the Center for Military Readiness, which issued a report called “U.S. Marine Corps Research Findings: Where is the Case for Co-Ed Ground Combat?”

According to CMR, a non-profit think tank, the Obama administration expects the Marine Corps to find a way to assign women to ground combat units without lowering standards.

“In the independent view of CMR, quantitative research done so far indicates that these expectations cannot be met,” the group said....

In a pull-up test, women averaged 3.59 while men averaged 15.69 – more than four times as many.

A “clean and press” event involved single lifts of 70, 80, 95 and 115 pounds plus six repetitions of a 65 pound lift.

Eighty percent of the men passed the 115 pound test but only 8.7 percent of the women.

In the 120 mm tank loading simulation, participants were asked to lift a simulated round weighing 55 pounds five times in 35 seconds or less. Men failed at a less than 1 percent rate while women failed at a rate of 18.68 percent.

The Marines said nearly one in five women “could not complete the tank loading drill in the allotted time.”

“It would be very likely that failure rates would increase in a more confined space [such as a tank].”

The artillery lift and carry had volunteers pick up a 95 pound artillery round and carry it 50 meters in under two minutes. Again, less than 1 percent of the men failed but 28.2 percent of women.

The obstacle involved a seven-foot wall with a 20-inch box, simulating a fellow soldier’s helping hand. Less than 1.2 percent of the men failed and 21.3 percent of the women.

CMR’s report said while the tests don’t replicate combat, “they do constitute empirical data based on reality, not theories about gender equality.”

We've all been following these USMC efforts, and I don't think there's anything to suggest they've been stacked against the women who have volunteered. Anyone disagree?

No, Georgia's Not Turning Blue

Has anyone at the New York Times ever been to Georgia?

No other plausibly competitive state has seen a more favorable shift for Democrats in the racial composition of eligible voters over the last decade. The pace of demographic change is so fast that Michelle Nunn, a Democrat, is locked in a tight race against the Republican David Perdue for an open Senate seat — even with an off-year electorate that is favorable for the G.O.P....

According to data from the Georgia secretary of state, the 2010 electorate was 66.3 percent white and 28.2 percent black.... I expect the 2014 electorate to be about 64.2 percent white and 28.8 percent black. (Ms. Nunn is expected to win at least 90 percent of the black vote.) Yet the last four nonpartisan polls that released demographic data showed an electorate that’s 65.7 percent white and 25.7 percent black. Those polls show Mr. Perdue ahead by 3.3 points, but they would show something closer to a dead heat if the likely electorate matched my estimates....

Georgia is perhaps the single state where [demographic change] would make a noticeable difference, because of the degree of racial polarization and the pace of demographic change.

Emphasis added.

The reason Michelle Nunn is running more-or-less even with Perdue is that she comes from a family famous in the state for excellent service in the Senate. Her father is almost a watchword for what a good Senator should look like. In addition, she's made her career working with the Bush family ever since the first Bush administration. So Republicans can look at her and see a woman who can reach across the aisle, has plenty of respect from their own party, and has a kind of life-long apprenticeship from the man whose Senate career Georgia voters already most respect.

David Perdue comes from the same family as Sonny Perdue, a recent governor who broke key election promises to base voters, and was unimpressive as governor. David Perdue has no experience in politics from which to judge, but he made his career on Wall Street, a place whose name normally turns up in Georgia elections as a curse: e.g., 'If elected, I will defend the values of Main Street against Wall Street.'

Of course he's running weak. That doesn't mean the state is turning blue. It means he's running from a very weak position, against the best candidate the Democratic party has fielded in more than a decade.

A "racial" analysis of this election is neither helpful nor wise. For that matter, it's wrong. The reason Nunn is doing well is that the Georgia electorate is less polarized by race -- whether or not black voters have moved off their traditional support for the Democratic party, more white Georgians are willing to vote for this Democrat.

Pushing Costs Onto Taxpayers

Vox is very happy that Walmart workers are going to lose their health insurance thanks to the ACA.

Namely, anybody who gets access to affordable coverage at work is barred from getting subsidies through the new exchanges. This is even true for people who don't buy insurance at work; just the act of getting offered employer coverage blocks individuals from using getting financial help.

That financial help can be a big deal for those with lower incomes. Think of the 36-year-old Walmart employee here in Washington, D.C. who works 29 hours per week at the company's average wage of $12.73 per hour. She earns just about $19,000 annually if she works every week of the year.

If Walmart doesn't offer her insurance, the Kaiser Family Foundation's subsidy calculator shows that she qualifies for a $1,751 subsidy from the federal government to help buy coverage on the exchange. With that financial help, she can buy insurance for as little as an $7 per month. As a low-wage worker, she gets some of the most generous financial help.

But if Walmart does offer her coverage, it becomes her only option. She doesn't qualify for federal help and the $7 plan disappears. Walmart's plan, meanwhile, is way more expensive. The average premium there works out to $111 per month.

They do kind of get around to mentioning, at the end, that "the loser in the Walmart decision is the Federal budget." What that means is that the loser is the taxpayer, i.e., you and me and everyone we know. Walmart is saving money at our expense.

Great news! Good job, progressives. You've managed to enrich the Walton family.

Also, though they won't do it all at once, you've managed to depress the wages of Walmart workers and other workers in similar industries. That's because right now Walmart has been paying them enough that they could afford that $111 a month if it was important to them. Now, raises can slim and come fewer and further between, as Walmart has $111/month cushion in its workers' paycheck that it can play with. Since Walmart competes for workers with many other similar companies, all of those companies will also be able to pay less over time and still draw the workers they need.

Especially if they get that comprehensive immigration reform you'd like, right? Imagine when we can vastly inflate the labor supply at that level of competition, and with people who are accustomed to living the lifestyle of an undocumented immigrant.

Yes sir, you're really helping out the working man. Morons.

Does Your Dog Love You?

Science can't say! Who knows what the experience is like for a dog? But we can say that the dog experiences excitement in a certain region of the brain associated with reward:

Greg Berns, an Emory neuroscientist, has found that when dogs sniff a rag soaked in their owner's scent, activity spikes in their caudate nucleus — a reward center involved in emotional attachment. It doesn't when they smell a stranger's scent. He's also found that the same activity occurs when these dogs' owners walk into the room, but not when strangers do.

Also, turns out dogs can learn hundreds of words. Not just "dinnertime" and "no!"

UPDATE: Do you love your dog?

Tenure

Katharine Stevens argues that eroding tenure rights will help, not hurt, the effort to retain the best teachers.  Even more than they want ironclad job security, good teachers want to be able to depend on their colleagues, especially the colleagues who had charge last year of this year's class.